LB 2g'D2 



THE ORGANIZATION AND 
PROCEDURE OF THE 
BOARD OF EDUCATION OF 
THE CITY OF NEW YORK 



^ 



BY 

LEWIS MAYERS, M. A. 

1913 



THE ORGANIZATION AND 
PROCEDURE OF THE 
BOARD OF EDUCATION OF 
THE CITY OF NEW YORK 



BY 



LEWIS MAYERS, M. A. 

Sometime University Scholar in Constitutional Law, Columbia University 
Sometime Fellow in Political Science, University of Wisconsin 



Submitted in partial fulfilment of the 
requirements for the degree of doctor 
OF Philosophy, Faculty of Political 
Science, Columbia University' 

1913 






^, T---- -^^^ 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



This study of the organization and methods 
of the Board of Education of the City of 
New York was made under the direction 
of Professor Frank J. Goodnow of Colum- 
bia University, and Dr. Frederic C. Howe, 
Director of the People's Institute of New 
York City, in connection with the investi- 
gation into the status and procedure of the 
department of education made by them at 
the request of the Committee on School 
Inquiry of the Board of Estimate and 
Apportionment of the City of New York. 
The work has received their criticism and 
suggestion at every point. Dr. Frank P. 
Bachman, formerly Assistant Superintendent 
of Schools in Cleveland, and now connected 
with the Board of Estimate, also kindly read 
the manuscript and made many valuable 
suggestions. I desire to express my sincere 
thanks also to Mr. Burdette E. Lewis, of 
the executive staff of the president of the 
Board of Aldermen, as well for his helpful 
criticisms as for his courtesies in connection 
with the present publication. 

Lewis Mayers. 



-^aPT II. THE BOARD OF EDUCATION: ITS ORGANIZATION AND 

METHODS 

Page 

Introductory 1 13 

Chapter I. Powers and Duties 

Section i. Legislative Powers "5 

Section 2. Inspectorial Powers 122 

Section 3. Administrative Powers 125 

Summary 136 

Chapter II. Meetings of the Board 

Section i. Time of Meetings; Attendance of Members 138 

Section 2. Preparation of Business for Board's Action 136 

Section 3. The Board in Action I43 

Summary i59 

Chapter III. The Committee System 

Section i. Organization 161 

Section 2. Powers and Functions of the Several Committees . . 164 

Section 3. Efficiency of the Committee System 183 

Summary 192 

Summary of Findings; Recommendations . iQS 



Introductory 

"The head of the Department of Education," declares the Charter 
(Sec. io8), "shall be called the Board of Education and shall consist of 
forty-six members." 

By a subsequent section of the Charter (Section 1061) it is pro- 
vided that these members shall receive no compensation and shall be 
appointed by the Mayor for a five-year term (twenty-two of them from 
Manhattan, fourteen from Brooklyn, four from The Bronx, four from 
Queens, and two from Richmond, their terms being so arranged that 
as nearly as may be the terms of one-fifth of the representation from 
each borough of the City shall expire each year). Each member of 
the Board may be removed by the Mayor at any time for cause, but be- 
fore being removed must receive timely notice of the charges against 
him and a copy thereof, and is entitled to a hearing and the assistance 
of counsel. 

Discussion of the wisdom of these provisions, with reference to the 
number, appointment and terms of the Board, is reserved for the con- 
clusion of this part of the report. 



CHAPTER I. POWERS AND DUTIES 

Section i. Legislative Powers. 
Section 2. Inspectorial Powers. 
Section 3. Administrative Powers. 
Summary 

Section 1. Legislative Powers 

a. Charter provisions. 

b. Limitations. 

c. Propriety of powers vested. 

a. Charter provisions 

The legislative powers of the Board of Education are not set forth 
at any one place in the Charter, but are scattered through a great many 
sections, and are granted in some cases only incidentally or by implica- 
tion. In the following summary statement they have been divided 
under six heads, according to their character, though no such classifica- 
tion is recognized or indicated by the Charter.^ 

I. To determine the nature of instruction 

(a) To decide what schools are to be established (Section 1069, 
Par. i). 

(b) "To change the grades of all schools and of all classes of the 
schools under its charge, and to adopt and modify courses of study for 
all schools," subject, however, to a veto by the Board of Superintend- 
ents, which can be overridden only by a vote of two-thirds of all the 
members of the Board of Education (Section 1084, as amended by 
Chapter 749 of the Laws of 1913, approved May 26, 1913).^ 

(c) To "approve, upon the recommendation of the Board of 
Superintendents, text books, apparatus and other scholastic supplies" 
(Sec. 1083). 

1 The Charter is redundant upon several of the points here involved. Where sev- 
eral clauses cover the same point only the broadest has been quoted. 

" The full text of the section is as follows : "Section 1084. The Board of Educa- 
tion shall have power to change the grades of all schools and of all classes of the 
schools under its charge, and to adopt and modify courses of study for all schools. 
No such change or modification, however, shall be made unless such proposed change 
or modification is first submitted to the Board of Superintendents. The said Board 
of Superintendents shall thereupon within such time as the by-laws may prescribe and 
not less than forty days thereafter report thereon. In case such a report is adverse 
such change or modification shall not be effectual unless passed by a vote of two-thirds 
of all the members of the Board of Education." 

115 



Il6 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

2. To regulate the general conduct of the schools 

(a) To "enact by-laws and regulations for the promotion and 
welfare and best interests of the public schools and public school system 
of the City in the matters committed to its care" (Sec. 1068). 

(b) To "prescribe regulations under which schools shall receive 
children between the ages of four and twenty-one," such regulations not 
to conflict with the general school law of the State (Sec. 1056) ; and 
to approve regulations established by the Board of Superintendents "for 
the reception of pupils in the schools of the City, the promotion of 
pupils from grade to grade, from school to school, for the graduation 
from all grades of schools, and for the transfer of pupils from one 
school to another" (Sec. 1082). 

3. To control the supervisory and teaching staff 

(a) Organization. — To provide for the appointment of "such direc- 
tors of special branches as it deems necessary" (Sec. 1079) ; and "to 
designate, on the recommendation of the Board of Superintendents, 
the kinds or grades of licenses to teach which may be used in the City 
of New York" (Sec. 1089).! 

(b) Qualifications. — "To designate on the recommendation of Board 
of Superintendents the academic and professional qualifications re- 
quired for each kind or grade of license, and the academic and profes- 
sional qualifications required for services of principals, branch princi- 
cipals, supervisors, heads of departments, assistants, and all other mem- 
bers of the teaching staff" (Sec. 1089). 

(c) Salaries. — "To adopt by-laws fixing the salaries of all members 
of the supervising and teaching staff," subject to important limitations.^ 
(Sec. 1091, as amended by Ch. 902, Laws of 191 1). 

4. To control officers and employees not members of teaching and 
supervisory staffs 

(a) Organization. — "To provide for the appointment of a chief 
clerk and such other ^ officers, clerks and subordinates as it may deem 
necessary for its administrative duties as are provided for by the proper 
appropriation" (Sec. 1067). 

(b) Salaries. — "To prescribe the compensation of members of the 
Board of Examiners and their temporary assistants" (Sec. 1089).* 

1 This power is of greater importance than might appear, as upon its exercise de- 
pends the organization not only of instruction within the school, but of all external su- 
pervision and inspection, the clause "licenses to teach" having been interpreted in prac- 
tice to authorize the creation of purely supervisory and inspectorial positions. 

"They are (a) that no reduction shall be made in the salaries of persons holding 
positions on October 30, 191 1. (b) That the salaries fixed shall be not less than cer- 
tain stated amounts, (c) That no discrimination in salaries shall be based on sex. 

*That is, other than the officers (Secretary, Superintendent of Buildings, etc.), 
whose appointment is specifically provided for by the Charter. 

■* These are the only employees of the Board, not members of the teaching or sup- 
pervisory staff, whose salaries are not fixed by the Board of Estimate and Apportion- 
ment and the Board of Aldermen. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 



117 



5. To regulate the finances of the department 

(a) "To represent the schools and the school system before the 
Board of Estimate and Apportionment and before the Board of Alder- 
men in all matters of appropriations in the budget of the City for edu- 
cational purposes'' ; and annually to ''submit to the Board of Estimate 
and Apportionment an estimate of the moneys needed for the entire 
school system of the City during the next succeeding calendar vear" 
(Sec. 1064). 

The "estimate of moneys required for the entire school system of 
the City during the next succeeding calendar year" does not under pres- 
ent practice include any moneys for the erection of buildings or the 
acquisition of sites, a separate estimate for such purposes being pre- 
sented to the Board of Estimate annually in the spring. 

(b) "To administer all moneys appropriated or available for edu- 
cational purposes," such money being appropriated chiefly by the fiscal 
authorities of the City and, to a slight extent, by the State. 

(c) To establish rules and regulations for the administration of 
the retirement fund (Sec. 1092). 

6. To determine school districts 

(a) To divide the several boroughs every five years into forty-six 
local school districts, apportioned among the several boroughs in the 
same proportion as are seats in the Board of Education (Sec. 1087). 

b. Limitations on legislative powers 

While the legislative powers thus conferred are varied and exten- 
sive there exist several important limitations upon them, with respect 
to both educational policy and internal organization; and these must be 
given due weight in any attempt to fix the extent of the responsibility 
of the Board of Education for the management of the City's schools. 

1. As to educational policy 

In the first place the function of the Board with respect to several 
matters of prime importance in connection with school management was, 
apparently, intended by the Charter to be more conservative than crea- 
tive. For, the Board can act in these matters only upon recommenda- 
tion of the Board of Superintendents. Until very recently (May, 
1913) the Board of Education did not have the slightest power to modify 
the course of study without the initiation and recommendation of that 
body. It could "establish schools," but could determine what should 
be taught in those schools only to the extent of vetoing proposals for 
change made by the Board of Superintendents. If the latter body were 
satisfied with the existing course of study, the Board of Education, not- 
withstanding its theoretical headship of the school system, was power- 
less to effect any change, however greatly desired. 

The power of the Board of Education is still limited to that of veto, 



Il8 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

it will be observed, in the determination of the kinds of licenses to teach 
which shall be used, and the qualifications required for such licenses, 
and also in the enactment of regulations regarding the reception, pro- 
motion, graduation and transfer of pupils. Yet, full power in all these 
matters, and certainly in the first, would seem to be fundamental to a 
complete control over the educational policy. 

The possession by the Board of Superintendents of all power of in- 
itiation in the matter mentioned has constituted a serious limitation on 
the ability of the Board of Education to shape the direction of educa- 
tional endeavor. It may be argued that the Board of Education pos- 
sesses a measure of control over the Board of Superintendents, in that 
it exercises almost annually the power of election of one or more mem- 
bers of that body for a term of six years. The control thus granted is, 
however, in view of the important administrative functions of the Asso- 
ciate Superintendents, too weak and unsatisfactory to be of any sig- 
nificance. Even if it be found, as is indeed the case, that the Board of 
Education has, during the past decade, systematically reelected to office 
the members of the Board of Superintendents upon the expiration of 
their terms, the inference is not warranted that the attitude assumed by 
the latter body upon matters of course of study, kinds of licenses, etc., 
has had the approval of the Board of Education. 

The Board of Education does not have the power to levy taxes, and 
has the right of demanding from the fiscal authorities annually for 
teachers' salaries only an amount which under present conditions is little 
more than sufficient to cover the salaries of teachers in elementary 
schools as at present conducted. The power of the Board to extend the 
activities of the schools in new directions, or to enter upon any educa- 
tional policy requiring large expenditure, is therefore strictly limited by 
the financial allowances which the fiscal authorities of the City are 
willing to make for it. 

2. As to internal organization 

Serious limitations exist also on the power of the Board to create 
such an internal organization as it may deem best suited to the needs 
of the department, on either the business or the educational side. 

(a) Statutory. — In the first place, the City Charter and the General 
Education Law of the State fix in more or less detail the administra- 
tive organization of the Board of Education. 

The Charter of the City provides (Sees. 1067, 1079, 1089) for the 
following officers of the Board : on the business side, a secretary, a su- 
perintendent of school buildings, a superintendent of school supplies, 
and one or more auditors ; on the educational side, a city superintendent 
of schools, eight associate city superintendents (who, with the city su- 
perintendent, constitute the Board of Superintendents), twenty-six dis- 
trict superintendents, directors of special branches, a board of four 
examiners and a supervisor of lectures. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 119 

In some instances the Board of Education may fix the number in 
the class of officers mentioned; but, as will be observed, the law in 
most cases provides for a certain number. The terms of the officers 
mentioned are, also, in the case of all but the secretary and auditor, 
fixed by the Charter at six years. Furthermore, other provisions re- 
garding ail of the officers mentioned, except the directors of special 
branches, make their appointment by the Board virtually mandatory. 

Again, the General Education Law ^ of the State provides for the 
organization of the I'ermanent Census Board, and exempts it entirely 
from any control by the Board of Education. 

Lastlv, although as above pointed out the Board of Education is 
recognized by Section 1068 of the Charter as having the power to enact 
by-laws, rules and regulations for defining the duties of its officers, the 
powers of most of those officers are fixed in some detail by the law. 

(b) Fiscal. — In the second place, the power of the Board of Edu- 
cation to organize its administrative force is limited by the budgetary 
powers of the city authorities. Section 1067 of the Charter makes it 
impossible for the Board of Education to appoint any "officers, clerks 
or subordinates" (other than those specifically authorized by the Char- 
ter) who are not "provided for by the proper appropriation." This 
limitation, when taken together with the power of the Board of Esti- 
mate and Apportionment and the Board of Aldermen to fix the salaries 
of employees of the Board of Education other than members of the 
teaching and supervising force, makes it impossible for the Board of 
Education to effect any important enlargement, or even readjustment of 
its administrative system, without the consent of the city's financial 
authorities. 

In the light of these limitations it may not correctly be said that the 
Board of Education is entirely responsible for the present organization 
of its administrative staff, on either the business or the educational side. 
It cannot be denied, however, that that body must bear a large share 
of responsibility for existing conditions. 

c. Propriety of legislative powers vested 

In examining into the question of' whether the charter investment 
of the Board of Education, with the legislative powers above sum- 
marized, is well considered, attention should first be given to the ex- 
ceptional organization of "the head of the Department of Education" 
(as the Charter terms the Board), as compared with that of the heads 
of other municipal departments. 

The development of municipal governmental organization in the 
past few decades has been unmistakably towards the centralization of 
authority over each branch of administration in a single responsible 
paid expert, devoting his whole time to his duties. Yet almost all of 
the chief cities of the United States, even those which in other respects 

1 Consolidated Laws, Chapter 16, Section 650. 



120 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

show the influence of the tendency mentioned most clearly, are in ac- 
cord with the City of New York in entrusting the final authority in 
educational matters to a more or less numerous board of unpaid laymen, 
who devote but a small portion of their time and attention to their 
official duties. 

The justification for such an exceptional, not to say anomalous, 
form of organization, in the government of the City of New York, is 
commonly declared by its advocates to lie in the existence in the work 
of educational government of peculiar elements. Doubtless, as most 
important among those elements, may be mentioned the intimate rela- 
tion which the educational activities of the City bear to the welfare of 
every citizen — a relation more vital and more universal than that borne 
by any other municipal activity under normal conditions. Because of 
the character of this relation it is felt that final determination of the 
essential elements of educational activity — the formulation of the aim 
and basic characteristics of the several courses of instruction, and of the 
fundamental regulations governing the relations between teacher and 
pupil, should not be left wholly in the hands of professional school men, 
whose contact with the varied business and social environment of the 
metropolitan community must necessarily be limited. It is believed that 
a body of well-informed citizens can render valuable service by supple- 
menting the pedagogical knowledge of the professional school man with 
experience gained in various v>falks of life and among varied elements 
of the city's population, and, with an opinion, fairly representative, pre- 
sumably, of the matured judgment of the people. 

Again, it may be pointed out that the scope of activities and func- 
tions entrusted to the department of "education" is much less clearly 
defined than is that of any other important department of municipal 
government. The educational authorities are continually being urged, 
both by the situations which confront them and by persons professing 
to represent important bodies of public opinion, to widen the scope and 
extent of the activities under their charge. Properly to evaluate and 
appraise the worth of the suggestions for innovation thus continually 
presented is, it may well be felt, a work of such difficulty, and involving 
a balance between so many and varied considerations of not only educa- 
tional, but social and even economic policy, as to make it much more 
properly a subject for the legislation of representative citizens than for 
the administration of an educational expert, however capable. To pre- 
sent the matter from another angle, it may be said that the preparation 
of the budget estimates of almost all other city departments is almost 
Avholly a work of arithmetical computation; while the preparation of 
the educational estimate may be a legislative work of high order. 

The educational system of New York City demands, to an excep- 
tional degree, continuous legislative, policy-making activity. The un- 
remittingly rapid growth of the cit3^ its incomparably varied and mo- 
bile economic life, the almost periodic erection within it of new and 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 12 1 

large alien communities, all combine to necessitate in its educational 
government a state of flux, because of which the proper direction of the 
educational system with reference to the interests of the many and 
varied elements of its population calls unmistakably for lay counsel. 

Still another element peculiar to educational government is to be 
found, it may be ventured, in the solicitude with which the welfare of 
the teacher, as compared with any other public employee, is commonly 
regarded. Whether rightly or wrongly, it is more or less generally 
felt to be a matter of prime importance that the teacher should be as- 
sured a reasonable compensation. It may further be felt that such 
assurance should not depend for its continuance upon the decision of 
merely political officials, who might thereby exercise a pernicious in- 
fluence over the morale of the teaching force, but upon the determina- 
tion of a non-political body, chosen presumably for its single-minded 
devotion to the good of public education. 

Lastly, it may be pointed out that the business problems involved in 
financing most economically the educational system of so large and so 
mobile a city as New York are exceptionally difficult, and are, per- 
haps, more largely dependent for their best solution upon general social 
and business considerations than upon purely technical ones. 

It is, therefore, not unreasonably felt that the intervention of laymen 
should be invoked in connection with the more important questions of 
educational finance and educational policy.^ 

If these general considerations, regarding the functions properly to 
be fulfilled by the Board of Education, are well considered, it will be 
of value to examine, in the light of them, the summary of the legislative 
powers of the Board, and the limitations thereon, above presented. 

So viewed, those powers seem in the main consistent with the con- 
ception of the Board as primarily a legislative body just presented. The 
provisions enumerated touch upon every essential phase of legislative 
power with reference to education which can properly be entrusted to 
local authority. 

With reference to the limitations on the powers granted, however, 
the provisions of the Charter seem at some points ill-considered. The 
limitation until recently in force upon the power of the Board to modify 
courses of study was, it would seem, inconsistent with the provisions 
authorizing the Board to decide, without the possibility of any control 
or check by the Board of Superintendents, what schools should be estab- 
lished and what schools the City should be asked to finance. An analo- 

1 It is not contended, of course, that the Board can be expected to pass intelligent 
judgment upon the detail of particular expenditures urged by its paid officers; but it 
may, without serious question, be affirmed that if the Board be active it can, by requir- 
ing periodical summary reports of expenditures and statistics, pass upon the wisdom of 
the general policies pursued ; can determine, in the matter of site acquisition, for ex- 
ample, whether or not sites are being bought too far in advance of actual needs, and 
whether the data kept by its officers are suitable for developing required information 
as to the need of sites. 



122 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

gous, though by no means equally important, inconsistency appears to 
lie in the limitations on the Board's power to determine the kinds of 
licenses to teach which shall be used, a power the fundamental charac- 
ter of which, as controlling the entire organization of both instruction 
and supervision, was above pointed out. 

The view upon which this limitation, as w^ell as that upon the 
Board's power to modify courses of study which until so recently ob- 
tained, were apparently framed and are still defended, regards the 
Board as not possessed of sufficient technical information and experi- 
ence for the full exercise of the powers in cjuestion. It seems gratuitous 
to assume, however, in view of the past experience of the Board, that 
it is at all likely to attempt to over-ride the judgment of its educational 
experts on matters of pedagogical technique, or that it will use the 
power newly conferred upon it. or whatever additional power of simi- 
lar import may in future be conferred upon it, in any other way than to 
direct the main currents of educational endeavor along channels clearly 
marked out by an informed and representative public opinion. 

The limitations on the Board's power to shape its internal organiza- 
tion, above discussed, which arise out of the elaborate and detailed 
provisions of the Charter outlining the organization of the Board's 
business and educational administration, seem uncalled for. A greater 
concentration of responsibility in the Board, and a correspondingly 
greater flexibility in its administration, would be secured by the abroga- 
tion of all the Charter provisions in question, and the investment of the 
Board with full power to determine the number, tenure and duties of 
its administrative officers, both business and educational. 

The propriety of the limitations imposed upon the Board's control, 
both over educational policy and internal organization, by the financial 
check exercised by the city's fiscal officers, has already been discussed 
in the preceding part of this report. 

Section 2. Inspectorial powers 

a. Appointment of chief officers. 

b. Removal of chief officers. 

c. Power of investigation. 

The law also contemplates the exercise by the Board of a function of 
general surveillance and of appraisal of results — a function which, for 
lack of a better name, may be characterized as inspectorial. Several 
classes of power are conferred upon the Board by means of which this 
function may be exercised. 

a. Appointment of chief officers 

The first pov/er of the Board which may perhaps properly be classed 
as inspectorial in character is that of selecting its chief officers of ad- 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 12t, 

ministration, on both the educational and business side. The Charter 
(Sec. 1089) empowers the Board to appoint the City Superintendent, 
the Associate and District Superintendents, the Board of Examiners 
and the Directors of Special Branches without the preparation of any- 
eligible list (although certain educational and pedagogical qualifications 
must be possessed by appointees to these offices). So, too, following 
the apparent intent of the Charter, the Municipal Civil Service Commis- 
sion has placed in the exempt class the positions of Secretary and Super- 
intendents of Supplies and of Buildings. In the selection of these offi- 
cers, the dominating factors in the administration of the entire depart- 
ment, the Board has thus a free hand. The far-reaching influence 
exerted by the Board in the exercise of this function needs no pointing 
out. 

With respect to the Examiners, District Superintendents and Direc- 
tors of Special Branches, the Board's power of selection is much more 
limited than in the case of the other officers mentioned; for it can 
appoint examiners only upon the nomination of the City Superintendent, 
and District Superintendents and Directors of Special Branches only 
iipon the nomination of the Board of Superintendents. The question 
has recently been much discussed whether these limitations upon the 
Board's power of selection should not be removed. 

Without entering into the moot questions of pedagogical adminis- 
tration, here involved, it may be pointed out that insofar as the change 
suggested is calculated further to concentrate in the Board the responsi- 
bility for the City's educational government, it would seem, on general 
considerations, to be desirable. 

b. Removal of chief officers 

The power of removal is closely related to that of selection; and it 
would seem that no inspectorial control can be adequate which does not 
permit the removal by the controlling head of any of the chief officers 
whom he has selected by some simple and expeditious procedure. 

The Charter provides (Sec. 1067) that the Superintendents, Exam- 
iners, Supervisor of Lectures, Secretary, Superintendents of Buildings 
and Supplies, and Auditor — in short, all the chief officers of the Board 
— "may be removed for cause by the vote of three- fourths of all the 
members of the Board of Education." The effect of these provisions, 
under the law and practice, is to make removal possible only for serious 
delinquencv or incompetence, and only after the formal trial of charges. 
The terms of most of the officers mentioned are fixed at six years, while 
no term is set for the Secretary and Auditor. If it should become 
apparent to the Board, within the first year after the appointment of 
such an officer, that he, while not positively inefficient, is yet not entirely 
suitable for the position in question, the Board would be virtually with- 
out any power of remedy. It would be obliged to permit the official to 
serve out his six-year term. If the Board is really the responsible "head 



124 . EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

of the Department of Education," it is difficult to see why it should 
not, Hke the heads of all other city departments, have power to request 
the resignation of its chief officers, without the necessity for, or the 
implication of, positive inefficiency or neglect of duty. It is beheved 
that the large body of watchful public opinion, which is incessantly 
focussed upon educational matters, affords a more than adequate assur- 
ance that the power so vested in the Board of Education would not be 
used for any but worthy ends. 

c. Power of investigation 

The Charter (Sec. iioo) specifically empowers the Board "to in- 
vestigate any subject of which it has cognizance, or over which it has 
legal control," including the conduct of any of its members or em- 
ployees. Eor the purpose of such investigation, moreover, the Board 
may administer oaths, and, through the Supreme Court, compel the 
attendance of witnesses. 

That the power of investigation and appraisal is one properly exer- 
cised by the Board, is thought to be hardly open to question. Without 
it the Board would have no means of measuring the effects of the legis- 
lative policies which it has enacted, or of judging the efficiency of the 
officers whom it has selected. 

At the present time, however, the investigatory power of the Board 
is subject to several important practical limitations. 

Investigations often lose much of their effectiveness when those 
whose work is to be scrutinized have received advance notice of the 
intended investigation. When investigations can be undertaken only 
upon the enactment of formal resolution by the Board, publication of 
such advance notice is, however, unavoidable. 

Again, the enactment by the Board of a resolution calling for an 
investigation not infrequently casts a derogatory reflection upon the 
persons whose activities are to be made the subject of investigation. 
In view of the wide publicity which such a resolution is invariably 
given, members of the Board are doubtless deterred from moving for 
any investigation except upon the very best of grounds. 

Lastly, under present conditions, almost the only method open to 
the Board in its work of investigation and appraisal is that of taking 
testimony. If the subject of investigation be at all an extensive one 
the limited time at the disposal of the members of the Board makes im- 
possible any personal examination by them of details; while, in other 
cases, their lack of technical pedagogical equipment may furnish an 
equally effective bar to such personal examination. The Board has not, 
however, at its ready command, the professional and expert assistance 
which the exercise of its power of investigation and appraisal would 
thus seem to necessitate. 

Eor these reasons it is believed that the full measure of the possi- 
bilities for good contained in the Board's power of investigation have 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 125 

not been realized. Largely, doubtless, in consequence of the practical 
limitations described, the Board has made use of its power but rarely, 
and only with reference to matters whose investigation was very plainly 
necessary, if not, indeed, very loudly called for. 

It is believed that the function of investigation and appraisal should 
be one of the constant and normal, rather than one of the exceptional 
functions of the Board. The peculiar difficulty in educational manage- 
ment of properly evaluating and appraising the results obtained, and 
of ascertaining, iDy any clearly visible signs, the general conditions pre- 
vailing, has already been pointed out in reports made to the Committee 
on School Inquiry by educational specialists. Only by continual inves- 
tigation and examination can the Board hope to keep itself informed 
upon, and in touch with, the tremendous system with whose direction 
it is charged. 

It is thought, then, that the investigatorial function of the Board of 
Education should be made capable of much readier, more flexible, and 
less formal exercise ; that it should be rendered more efficient by the 
employment of professional and expert assistance; and that it should 
become a normal and continual function. 

These ends, it is thought, can best be accomplished by the creation 
by the Board of a separate staff of experts, who shall devote themselves 
solely to the work of educational investigation and appraisal. Con- 
sideration of the proper form of organization and control of such a 
staff is presented elsewhere in this report.^ 

Section 3. Administrative powers 

a. Powers vested by law. 

b. Additional powers assumed. 

c. Propriety of powers vested and exercised. 

a. Powers vested by law 

In the foregoing sections it was seen that the Board possesses large 
powers of legislation and inspection, with reference to the conduct of 
both the educational and the business administration of the depart- 
ment — powers which authorize it not only to regulate the conduct of its 
administrative officers in almost all classes of matters in as minute detail 
as it may deem desirable, but even to overrule their action in particular 
matters. 

The regular exercise of administrative duties is therefore totally 
unnecessary to the maintenance of the full authority of the Board. It 
is, furthermore, inconsistent with that conception of the Board as a 
legislative body, which, the other powers of the Board already vested 
would seem clearly to indicate, was held by the framers of the Charter. 

Nevertheless, the provisions of the Charter enjoin upon the Board 

^ Section 3. Summary of Main Findings and Recommendations. 



126 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

the performance of a number of major administrative duties. It will 
be of value to consider not only the duties imposed, but also the extent 
to which they may be or have been delegated. 

1. Duties Imposed 

(a) Appointment of Employees. — In the foregoing section the 
power of selecting the chief officers of the Board, numbering not more 
than three score, was treated as inspectorial in character. The appoint- 
ment of the remaining 20,000 or more employees of the department is, 
however, under the requirements of the law, made from eligible lists 
prepared by either the Municipal Civil Service Commission or the 
Board of Examiners, by means of competitive examination. Never- 
theless, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter (Sections 1067 
and 1090) appointments to all these positions, from highest to lowest, 
are made by the Board of Education in full meeting.^ 

(b) Disciplining Employees. — Closely related to the appointing 
power vested in the Board is that of inflicting disciplinary punishment 
upon its employees. The Charter provides (Sec. 1093) that "the 
findings of any committee appointed by the Board to hear charges 
against a teacher shall be subject to final action by the Board," and 
that "a vote of the majority of all the members of the Board shall be 
necessary to impose the penalty of dismissal." With reference to the 
non-educational employees of the Board, the Charter (Sec. 1067) 
makes mention of no other punishment than that of removal, which it 
provides may be imposed only by a vote of three- fourths of all the 
members of the Board. 

(c) Retirement of Teachers. — A third administrative function with 
reference to its employees is imposed upon the Board by Section 1092 
of the Charter, dealing with the retirement of teachers. Teachers may 
be retired only by a vote of the Board, and, under certain conditions, a 
two-thirds vote, taken only upon the recommendation of the Board of 
Retirement, is required. 

(d) Construction of Buildings, etc. — With reference to the enor- 
mous amount of administrative detail connected with the erection and 
maintenance of school buildings, the only duty specifically imposed upon 
the Board is that found in Section 1073 of the Charter, which requires 
the submission to the Board, for its "approval," "all plans for new 
school buildings," and "for structural changes in old buildings." The 
Board is also empowered (by Sec. 1066) tO' "lease property required 
for the purpose of furnishing school accommodations, and to prepare 
and execute leases therefor." 

1 By Sections 1078, 1073, 1076 of the Charter, the City Superintendent is author- 
ized to appoint his clerks, the Superintendent of School Buildings his borough deputies 
and the Superintendent of School Supplies all his subordinates. These provisions are 
not heeded in current practice, however, the employees mentioned being appointed by 
action of the Board in exactly the same way as are all other employees. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 127 

The section of the Charter deaHng with the letting of contracts 
(Sec. 419) provides that contracts shall be let by the "head of depart- 
ment." 

2. Possibility of Delegation 

While at first sight it might seem that the administrative duties en- 
joined by the foregoing provisions are relatively insignificant in char- 
acter, the complexity and tremendous size of the educational system 
render the amount of the administrative work involved in performing 
them so great that it would be out of the question for the Board as a 
whole to attempt to execute the great bulk of them in any deliberative 
manner. Consequently, it is of importance to consider whether the 
provisions of the Charter permit the Board to delegate any of its powers 
to its administrative officers. 

That such a course is legally permissible, with reference to some 
of the matters mentioned, there can be little doubt. 

(a) Appointiiiciit of Employees. — With reference to the appoint- 
ment of clerical and administrative subordinates from lists of eligibles 
certified by the Municipal Civil Service Commission, the Charter merely 
provides (Sec. 1067) that the Board "may" appoint such employees, a 
provision which would seem to ofifer no obstacle to the investment of 
the bureau chief with full appointing power. 

The charter provision relating to the appointment of the teaching 
staff from eligible lists prepared by the Board of Examiners (Sec. 
1090) definitely requires that the appointment shall be by the Board, 
but it also provides that the nomination made by the Board of Superin- 
tendents (to whom is confided the power of selecting for each vacancy 
one of the first three names on the eligible list) shall be equivalent to 
appointment if the Board fails either to confirm or reject each nomina- 
tion within forty days of its being filed with the Secretary of the Board. 
The Charter itself thus seems to contemplate the virtual exercise of the 
powers of appointment of members of the teaching and supervisory staff 
by the Board of Superintendents, subject to a veto of the Board within 
forty days. 

(b) Disciplining Employees. — The duty imposed upon the Board 
of passing finally upon all cases of punishment of teachers and of dis- 
missal of employees takes up a relatively small part of the time of the 
Board, and it is difficult to see how. without a change in charter pro- 
visions,^ its duties could be delegated to any other authority, if, indeed, 
they ought to be; though, doubtless, consistency would seem to require 
that, in the Department of Education, as in all other city departments, 

1 In 1910 there was introduced into the State Legislature a bill (S. Bill 693) to 
do away with formal trial in the case of delinquent janitors and other employees; and 
the Board resolved in favor of its passage (1910 Minutes 621) ; but it is open to ques- 
tion whether even the present law requires more than a mere hearing to the em- 
ployees discharged. 



128 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

the power of removal for cause of merely clerical employees should be 
vested m the hands of the chief administrative officers. 

(c) Retirement of Teachers. — The duties imposed upon the Board 
with reference to the retirement of teachers are virtually clerical in 
character, and it is difficult to understand why they were imposed upon 
the Board at all. It is equally difficult, however, to see how the Board 
could divest itself of them without a charter amendment. 

(d) Construction of Bnildings, etc. — Neither does it seem that 
under present provisions the Board could omit to act upon plans for 
new buildings. The execution of leases and the award of contracts, 
when awarded to the lowest bidder, could probably, however, be en- 
trusted by it to the Superintendents of Buildings and of Supplies, with 
the signature of the President of the Board. 

The duties of appointing teachers and employees, and of awarding 
contracts are, however, the only administrative duties imposed by the 
Charter which make any serious inroad on the time of the Board; and 
it has been seen that the first, and probably also the second of those 
duties could legally be delegated to the officers of the Board. It would 
seem then that the charter provisions would offer but few obstacles to 
an attempt on the part of the Board to free itself from the performance 
of almost all administrative detail, with the object of securing a maxi- 
mum of time and attention for its legislative work. 

The Charter has, in fact, itself provided a method by which the 
Board may obviate the necessity of passing in full meeting upon any of 
the administrative functions enjoined upon it; for it creates (Sec. 1063) 
an Executive Committee of the Board, composed of fifteen members, 
selected annually by the Board (and subject to recall at any meeting 
by a majority vote of the Board), upon whom the Board is empowered 
"to confer * * * power to perform any of the administrative 
powers of the Board." By this charter provision there is thus made 
possible to the Board a dual organization — a small compact body of 
fifteen, for the complete transaction of administrative business, and a 
large body, almost three times as numerous, for the legislative and 
inspectorial work of the Board. If, then, legal objection should be taken 
to the partial delegation of administrative duties to paid officers, no 
obstacle exists to their complete delegation to the Board's Executive 
Committee. Plainly, then, the way lies open to the Board, by the use 
of one or both of those methods of delegation, to completely divest itself 
of all routine administrative duties, leaving itself free to devote its 
entire time to its legislative and supervisory work. 

3. Extent of delegation 

That such a course has not, however, been followed by the Board, 
would be clearly evidenced, if by nothing else, by the fact that the 
Board has failed to confer upon its Executive Committee any power 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 129 

whatever. Its by-laws (Sec. 12) merely provide that the Board ''may, 
by resolution, confer additional ^ administrative powers upon the Execu- 
tive Committee, when deemed necessary to facilitate the transaction of 
business." But, aside from the annual investment of the Committee 
with power to perform all the administrative functions of the Board 
during July and August, the Board has only once or twice, since the 
adoption by the by-law in its present form in 1905,- deemed it "neces- 
sary to facilitate the transaction of business" by referring a single mat- 
ter or class of matters to the Committee for action. 

Still less has the Board delegated any of the duties imposed upon 
it to its paid officers, to its standing committees, or to its President. 

b. Additional powers assumed by the Board 

Not merely, however, has the Board failed to take any action what- 
ever to divest itself of the administrative duties assigned to it by the 
law with which, because of their complexity and multiplicity, it is un- 
able intelligently to deal; it has assumed innumerable additional admin- 
istrative duties of a far more detailed character. 

Not only does the Board in full meeting act to appoint teachers and 
clerks from eligible lists, as above described, but it acts also upon their 
promotion; any change in the salary of a clerk, or other employee, even 
if only temporarily employed, must come before it for approval; the 
applications of clerks, janitors and cleaners for leave of absence, even 
without pay, must be submitted to it; any change in the organization 

1 This word would imply that some power is conferred by another part of the 
section in which it occurs; but such is not the case. 

2 Under the By-Laws originally adopted, March 26, 1902, the Executive Committee 
was authorized to receive the reports of all standing committees and to take final action 
with relation to the following matters : 

1. Proceedings for the acquisition of school sites already selected by the Board. 

2. Award of contracts authorized by the Board. 

3. Plans for new school buildings, additions and improvements thereto. 

4. Leases. 

5. Disposal of personal property. 

6. Appointment, promotion and transfer, and recommendations regarding salaries 

of clerks and employees. 

7. Suspensions of officers or employees pending trial. 

8. Decisions of local school boards with respect to charges against teachers, ex- 

cept dismissals. 

9. Lecture centers and appointments relating thereto. 

The Committee was also required to report to the Board annually, in December, a 
plan for apportioning the General School Fund. 

A recommendation for the repeal of this By-Law was made on December 22,, 1903, 
and was under consideration by the Committee on By-Laws and Legislation until No- 
vember 22, 1905. On that date (see Minutes 1905, page 2335) Section 12 of the By- 
Laws was adopted as it now stands, except for a later amendment regarding time of 
meeting. 

Since this change in the status of the Committee it has been the practice to dele- 
gate to it each year, by resolution of the Board, the conduct of business during the 
interval between the second Wednesday in July and the second Wednesday in Septem- 
ber. This resolution reserves to the full Board action relating to appointments of of- 
ficers of the Board and of principals and teachers in day schools, and to increases of 
salaries. 



I30 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

of the teaching staff (such as the transfer of a teacher from one district 
to another, or the assignment of a teacher to a special duty), or in the 
administrative staff (such as the transfer of a clerk from one bureau of 
the department to another, or the assignment of a janitor to additional 
service), must also be passed upon by the Board. It acts not only as 
the Charter requires, to authorize the construction of a school building, 
but also to authorize the setting aside by the Superintendent of School 
Buildings of a sum for repairs from a fund specifically appropriated for 
the general purpose. Its approval is required for every slightest disposi- 
tion of the property of the Department, such as the loan to a parochial 
or private school, or the sale for a few dollars of furniture and text- 
books for which the Board has no further use. 

Details of the educational organization and administration, too, 
require its action. Having decided to establish a given number of 
night schools, or summer schools, or lecture centers, or classes for 
anaemic or backward children, it does not leave final decision as to the 
location of those schools in the hands of the several superintendents of 
those activities, but requires their judgment to be submitted to it for 
approval; and the same holds good for the discontinuance of any such 
school or activity. If the Board of Superintendents decide that, in the 
interests of economical administration a certain branch school should be 
annexed to one main school, rather than another, or that certain unused 
rooms in an elementary school should be used for the overflow of an 
adjacent high school, their decision must be submitted to the Board for 
approval; a principal, desiring to award medals or prizes to his pupils, 
or to hold a prize speaking contest, or to have a school paper issued, or 
to conduct an athletic meet outside the school premises, or to have some 
of his pupils make a public appearance at an outside function, must first 
obtain the formal permission of the Board in regular session assembled. 

In short, nothing could be clearer, even from merely a cursory com- 
parison of the minutes of the Board with the charter provisions, than 
that the Board, far from attempting to rid itself of any of the adminis- 
trative burdens imposed upon it by the Charter, has added to that bur- 
den tremendously. Moreover, the possibility of any relief without defi- 
nite and radical action by the Board itself is made impossible by a by-law 
(Sec. 13, Subd. 14) which makes it incumbent upon every standing 
committee to report to the Board for its action "any matter regarding 
which a report is required bv bv-law, resolution, or practice of the 
Board." 

Some idea of the enormous mass of administrative, not to say 
clerical, detail, which comes to the Board for action, may be gained from 
the following figures, obtained by a careful examination of the index 
of the minutes of the Board for 1911.^ They are designed to show 

1 Published April, 1913. The 1912 index could not be made use of for this purpose 
as at the present writing (May, 1913), we are informed that it is not yet complete in 
manuscript form, and that it is not possible to state when it will be ready for publication. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 131 

every kind of action taken by the Board during that year (mere formal 
expressions, such as resolutions of thanks or sorrow, and actions con- 
cerning the conduct of the meetings of the Board being omitted) and 
the number of items passed on in each class. ^ 



Table Showing All Classes of Actions Taken by the Board of Education 
During the Year 191 1, with the Number of Items Considered 

in Each Class 

LEGISLATIVE, (a) 

I. General. 

Amending By-Laws 

by creating and abolishing teaching positions and fixing qualifications 

therefor 20 

by fixing salaries of teaching positions 10 

in other respects 21 

Establishing evening trade schools i 

Passing on changes in course of study 6 

Taking action on pending or desired legislation (State or municipal) 9 

Instructing Board of Examiners re merging of eligible lists i 68 



2. Financial. 

Adopting annual departmental estimate i 

Requesting corporate stock issues (inc. corporate stock estimate 1911-12). 10 

Requesting special revenue bond issues 13 

Apportioning the General School Fund i 

Requesting transfers of funds ." 40 65 

Total 133 



INSPECTORIAL, (a) 
Selecting officers (District Superintendents and Examiners) 



ADMINISTRATIVE. 

I. Financial, (b) 

"Appropriating" funds for payment of contracts already awarded, for addi- 
tional necessary work, for necessary repairs, etc 370 

Setting aside funds for expenditure by Buildings Committee 39 

Approving bills for necessary repairs 10 419 

' The number of items under some classes corresponds only approximately to the 
number of resolutions actually passed by the Board, inasmuch as in some cases, i. e., 
minor repairs, several items which appear separately in the Index are embodied in one 
resolution; while in others (i. e., appointment of teachers) the separate names involved 
are not indexed separately and there is thus but one entry for what is really a great 
number of actions. 

(a) and (b) See explanation at end of table. 



132 ' EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

2. Buildings and Supplies. 

Approving plans (c) 135 

Leasing premises (c) 30 

Selecting sites (c) 9 

Awarding contracts (to lowest bidder in all but two cases) (b) 236 

Loaning discarded furniture (b) 38 

Relinquishing control of buildings no longer needed (b) 5 

Authorizing separate publication of drawing syllabus (b) i 

Requesting paving of street (b) 3 457 



3. Teaching and Supervisory Staff. 

Disciplining (passing affirmatively or negatively on charges preferred 

against, and imposing dismissal, transfer, fine or reprimand) (c) 21 

Appointing from eligible lists (b) 273 

Promoting from eligible lists (b) 15 « 

Excusing absences not excusable by by-laws (b) 62 

Granting leaves of absence for purposes not covered by by-laws (b) 28 

Retiring (b) 170 

Transferring (b) , 86 654 



4. Other Employees (Clerks, Janitors, etc.) (b) 

Appointing from Civil Service lists 162 

Promoting 39 

Accepting resignations 69 

Excusing absences 10 

Granting leaves of absence without pay 21 

Granting vacations i, 54 

Disciplining (suspending and dismissing) 7 362 



5. School Organization, (b) 

Special Schools, Activities or Classes : 

Opening in particular places 18 

Transferring from and to particular places 5 

Changing sessions of particular schools within by-laws 4 

-Elementary Schools : 

Organizing II 

Organizing annexes to 9 

Consolidating and dividing 5 

Abandoning 4 

Temporarily enlarging clerical staffs of directors of special branches by 

assignment of substitute teachers 5 

Same for particular high school i 62 

(b) and (c) See explanation at end of table. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 133 

6. School Conduct, (b) 
Granting permission to school or school organization 

To hold public event outside of school building 22 

To hold public event inside of school building 5 

To publish a school paper 19 

To form a general organization i 

Granting permission to principal of school 

To serve lunch i 

To aw^ard medals or prizes 20 

To use rooms for a special purpose 10 

Granting permission to non-school organizations to use school buildings.. il 89 

Total Legislative Acts 133 

Total Inspectorial Acts 4 

Total Administrative Acts 2,043 



2,043 



Explanation of Table. 

(a) The powers falling within this class are believed, as set forth 
in the subsequent section of this report, to be properly exercised by the 
Board as a whole. 

(b) The powers in this class are believed to be of such a character 
as not to require the action of the Board as a whole, but merely that of 
administrative officers or committees of the Board. 

(c) The powers in this class are believed to be of the same charac- 
ter as those in class (b), but are not capable of delegation to officers or 
special committees of the Board because specifically imposed upon the 
Board itself by the charter. They can, however, as above indicated, be 
delegated to the Executive Committee of the Board. 

The total number of items under these several classes in the fore- 
going table, and their relative proportions, are as follows : 

(a) 137 6% 

(b) 1,848 85% 

(c) 195 9% 

Total 2,180 100% 

c. Propriety of administrative powers vested and exercised 

In examining into the question of what legislative powers, if any, 
were properly entrusted to the Board of Education, inquiry was first 
made whether there existed in the work of educational government any 
peculiar elements which might be urged as making desirable the exer- 
cise of such legislative powers by unpaid laymen, rather than by profes- 
sional educators or administrators. 

Similarly, it now remains to inquire whether, in the daily administra- 
tion of educational affairs, in the making of routine decisions on minor 
questions of personnel and organization, there exist any peculiar ele- 



134 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

ments which may be urged as making desirable the intervention in such 
routine administration of a lay Board of Education. 

That, in all the ordinary work of government, a single or few indi- 
viduals are far more effective than a parliamentary body, and that a 
paid and permanent expert is more efficient than an unpaid layman, 
temporarily interested, and working only intermittently, are propositions 
fundamental to all present-day governmental organization. 

Especially do they receive recognition, however, in the government 
of the City of~ New York. For the Charter which ordains that gov- 
ernment, and which creates the Board of Education in its present form, 
is firmly grounded on the theory of the superiority of one-man control 
to Board control in all matters of administration, one of its leading 
features having been the substitution of a single commissioner for a 
board in some of the most important branches of the City's govern- 
ment, notably that of police. Both general considerations of economy 
and administrative efficiency, and the intent of the Charter would seem, 
then, to combine in urging that the Board of Education should concern 
itself not at all with the ordinary routine of administration, but should, 
saving to itself a full power to correct any abuse of authorit}^ on their 
part, entrust that routine wholly to its paid officers, unless peculiar ele- 
ments requiring its intervention are found to exist. 

No peculiar conditions of the character referred to are, however, 
to be found in the daily routine of the department. The work en- 
trusted to the administrative officers of the department differs only in 
magnitude, but no whit in kind, from that entrusted to the administra- 
tive officers of other departments of the City. There is no important 
administrative c[uestion presented to them which cannot be duplicated 
in its essentials, even if not in its size, in one or another of the other 
municipal departments. On the whole, no more valid reason would 
seem to exist for the intervention of a lay board in routine educational 
administration, than in the routine administration of the Fire, Police, 
or Health Departments. 

One exception to this general conclusion may perhaps readily be 
admitted. It has been already pointed out that the morale of the teach- 
ing force of the City is commonly regarded as of higher importance 
than that of any other large body of public employees. It is felt that 
urgent as is the desirability of preventing the establishment in any of 
the municipal departments of a political, or even a personal "machine" 
or "system," to which all employees must adhere on pain of unfavor- 
able discrimination, demotion, or even dismissal, among the employees 
of no department would the demoralization attendant upon such a con- 
dition be fraught with such dire results as among the teachers and 
supervisory officers of the public schools. That the Board (which, 
by its tenure and mode of election, is likely to be non-political in char- 
acter) being vested with power to review the disciplinary judgments 
of the higher supervisory officers, may furnish a valuable, though by 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 135 

no means an infallible, safeguard against the establishment, or at least 
the riagrant abuse of such an educational "machine," seems fairly- 
clear. 

With this single exception, however, no reason is apparent why 
the intervention of the Board of Education should be invoked in any 
of those matters of routine administration, which in all other depart- 
ments are performed by a single individual, whether a bureau chief 
or the head of the department. It is therefore recommended that im- 
mediate steps be taken by the Board to divest itself of as many as 
possible of the administrative duties now performed by it, by trans- 
ferring them either to its officers or to its standing committees. 

The argument for the abandonment by the Board of all adminis- 
trative functions finds powerful support, as above indicated, in that 
provision of the Charter (Sec. 1063) which makes mandatory upon the 
Board the creation of an executive committee with power to perform 
the administrative duties of the Board. By failing to confer any pow- 
ers upon this committee (except that of acting for the Board during 
the summer months) the Board has unquestionably defeated the intent 
of the Charter. Wt believe that steps should immediately be taken 
by the Board, looking to a compliance with the spirit of the Charter, 
by the delegation of all its administrative duties to its Executive Com- 
mittee. 

As above pointed out (see p. 129, supra) such a delegation of the 
administrative powers of the Board to its Executive Committee did, in 
fact, o1)tain during the years 1902-1905. The reason for its revoca- 
tion was a feeling on the part of the members that, in the words of 
the then Chairman of the Committee on By-Laws and Legislation,^ 
"they were not sufficiently informed of what took place before the 
Executive Committee, and it was stated that the Executive Committee, 
being called upon to explain its action, made really duplication of 
work." If the contentions above made regarding the proper functions 
of the Board are valid, however, there is no good reason whv the mem- 
bers of the Board should have been informed, in any detail, of the purely 
routine actions taken by the Executive Committee. It should be re- 
membered, further, that when this ground for objection was found, 
the consolidated Board of Education was an innovation in the City's 
government, its work was in large part new to most of its members, 
and had not yet fallen into its present routine channels. 

In spite, therefore, of the fact that in recommending that the Board 
take steps immediately to vest in the Executive Committee all the ad- 
ministrative powers imposed upon it by the Charter, we are suggesting 
merely a return to the procedure of a decade ago, we believe our recom- 
mendation to be grounded both in reason and experience. 

The Charter did not contemplate, however, the performance even 
by the fifteen membered Executive Committee of all the great mass of 

1 In a letter written by him to this Committee under date of April 11, 1913. 



136 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

administrative business now performed by the Board as a whole, but 
merely of administrative duties of a major character, the chief of which 
are specifically imposed upon the Board by the Charter. We believe 
that the general considerations of economy, expediency, and charter 
theory, which were advanced as urging the divorce of the Board as a 
whole from all administrative functions, militate ecjually against the 
exercise by the Executive Committee, even though but one-third as 
numerous as the Board, of any but major administrative functions. 

In the view which we take, therefore, the delegation to the Execu- 
tive Committee of all the administrative powers now exercised by the 
Board should be but a first step, to be followed by the abandonment 
by the Executive Committee itself of the exercise of all those adminis- 
trative functions whose execution is not by the Charter specifically im- 
posed on either the Board or its Executive Committee. Whether such 
divestment should be in favor of the standing committees of the Board 
■or of its paid officers is discussed in the chapter on the committee 
system. 

Summary 

1. The legislative powers of the Board of Education should be 
strengthened by making more direct its control over educational policy 
and by removing the statutor}^ provisions which limit its control over 
its internal organization. 

2. The inspectorial powers of the Board should also be made 
more effective by the employment of professional assistance in the work 
of investigation and appraisal, and by making more readily available 
the power of removal over its chief officers. 

3. The administrative functions of the Board, however, far from 
Toeing augmented, should be almost wholly, if not wholly, abandoned. 

While the Charter conceives of the Board of Education as a legis- 
lative and inspectorial body, with a relatively small Executive Commit- 
tee performing the major administrative duties imposed upon the 
Board, the by-laws and practices adopted by the Board have imposed 
upon the Board itself the administrative duties intended by the Charter 
to be performed by the Executive Committee, and, in addition thereto, 
an enormous mass of routine administrative duties never intended by 
the Charter to be performed by either the Board or its Executive Com- 
mittee. 

The exercise of these administrative functions by the Board as a 
whole is as repugnant to all principles of economy and expedition as it 
is inconsistent with the intent of the Charter. 

Immediate steps should be taken by the Board to divest itself of all 
administrative functions not imposed upon it by law beyond the possi- 
bility of delegation. Furthermore, the Charter should be so amended 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 137 

as to relieve both the Board and its Executive Committee (which is 
also too large for efficient administration) from the legal necessity of 
performing any administrative work, leaving to the Board the power 
to provide for the performance of such work as it may deem best. 

In the above discussion, on the one hand larger power for the Board 
is urged, yet, on the other, it is pointed out that in its assumption of 
routine duties the Board has not wisely used the power already vested 
in it. The inconsistency between these two positions is, however, more 
apparent than real. 

The recommendations made must be considered as a whole, and not 
independently. It is believed that the very limitations on the Board's 
legislative and inspectorial powers, which it is here urged should be 
removed, have in themselves been largely responsible for the Board's 
apparent unwisdom in its assumption of minor administrative func- 
tions. A body whose powers in most directions are severely limited 
naturally tends to develop as fully as possible any power which is vested 
in it without limitation. Again, experience warrants the belief that, 
if the Board's control over its administrative affairs, through its powers 
of legislation, investigation, selection and removal, were made more 
direct and complete, there would be a greater willingness on the part of 
that body to entrust to those officers final power over the ordinary rou- 
tine of administration. 

Furthermore, what has been presented is, it is believed, a consistent 
conception of the proper functions, legislative, inspectional and admin- 
istrative, of a lay board of education in the City of New York, but not 
of the Board of Education as at present organized. The existing form 
of organization of the Board, and the methods of transacting business 
which almost necessarily result from it are, it is pointed out in the suc- 
ceeding chapters, such as to render it very questionable whether any 
additional powers can efficiently be exercised by that body while so 
organized. The suggestions herein presented, with reference to the 
proper powers of the Board, can justly be appraised, therefore, only 
in the light of the recommendations presented in a later chapter, regard- 
ing its proper size and form of organization. 



CHAPTER II. MEETINGS OF THE BOARD 

Section i. Time of meetings; attendance of members. 
Section 2. Preparation of business for Board's action. 
Section 3. The Board in action. 
Summary. 

Section 1. Time of meetings; attendance of members 

A stated meeting of the Board of Education is held every second 
Wednesday, between the second Wednesday in September and the sec- 
ond Wednesday in July/ at 4 P. M. Occasionally, but not often, spe- 
cial meetings are held, either upon resolution of the Board itself, or 
upon the written recjuest of ten members. 

Though the by-laws require the meetings of the Board to begin at 
4 o'clock, in practice they seldom begin till 4:30.^ Adjournment is 
usually voted at about 6:30, often earlier, seldom later; and, indeed, 
prolongation of the meeting even until 6:30 doubtless inconveniences 
seriously not a few of the members, as evidenced by the fact that at 
about 5 -.45 o'clock members usually begin to leave the meeting. It may 
be questioned whether, if the Board concerned itself only with the mat- 
ters appropriate to its character, as indicated in the preceding division, 
and if a large part of the information upon which it acts were pre- 
sented to its members before their assembling, as recommended below, 
even an hour and a half fortnightly might not be ample for its delibera- 
tions. If, however, it should be insufficient (as, under present condi- 
tions, it unquestionably is), it is worthy of consideration whether the 
evening would not be a more suitable time for meeting than the late 
afternoon. A meeting called to order at 7 130 could last probably until 
11:00 without disturbing the daily arrangements of any of the mem- 
bers, and without the members feeling, therefore, any desire to rush 
business merely in order to get home. It is also to be considered 
whether the holding of meetings at that time might not tend to encour- 
age greater interest in the work of the Board on the part of a large 
bodv of citizens who at present are denied the possibility of seeing the 

1 Between the second Wednesday of July and the second Wednesday of Septem- 
ber the admmistrative functions of the Board are exercised by its Executive Com- 
mittee. (See p. 129, supra.) 

' The minutes record the time of opening as 4 P. M., irrespective of the actual 
time. 

(Note. — Since the above was written, February, 1913, there has been a marked 
change in this respect, the meetings being called to order almost promptly at 4.) 

138 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 139 

Board in session. The experience of Boston, where the School Com- 
mittee holds its meetings ordinarily in the evening, would seem to indi- 
cate the desirability of the change suggested. 

The attendance of members at meetings at the present time is, on 
the whole, fairly regular, considering the large membership of the 
Board. An examination of the records for the year 1910, and for 
the first four months of 191 1, covering thirty-four meetings in ah, 
shows a total of 325 absences out of a total possible attendance of 
1,553, th'^^ ^S' absences to the extent of about 21 per cent, of the maxi- 
mum possible attendance, and an average of 9.5 absences per meeting.-^ 

A large portion of these absences is, of course, attributable to a 
relatively few members of the Board, who, for one reason or another, 
attend its meetings very infrecjuently. In the first four months of 
191 1, in which were held eleven meetings, there were nine members 
who were absent from four or more meetings, three having been absent 
from four, three from five, one from six, and two from nine meetings, 
so that these nine members were responsible for 51 of the 92 absences 
during that period. It would seem that some more or less automatic 
method should be provided for by which the names of members regu- 
larly absent should be brought to the attention of the Board or of the 
Mayor for action. There seems no good reason why a member of an 
important public body should be permitted to absent himself from nine 
out of eleven meetings of that body without being obliged to render a 
very good reason for his absence. 

Section 2. Preparation of business for Board's action 

a. Preparation of calendar. 

b. Printing of reports, etc., before presentation. 

The time available for meetings of the Board is necessarily very 
limited; and it therefore becomes urgently necessary that the informa- 
tion upon which the Board acts shall be placed before its members to 
as great an extent as possible, before they assemble, in order that as 
little as possible of the meeting may be consumed by the members in 
familiarizing themselves with the primary facts of the business before 
them, and as much as possible in real deliberation. 

Whether placed before them prior to or at their meeting, further- 
more, as much as possible of the information upon which the members 
of the Board act, and more especially the resolutions and by-laws which 

^ This computation was made from the roll-call printed in the minutes of each 
meeting, so that it takes no account of the appreciably large number of members who 
leave the meeting before adjournment, sometimes before the most important business 
■of the meeting has been reached on the calendar; nor of the fact that some members 
whose names appear as present on the roll-call actually spend the major part of the 
meeting in the members' rooms adjoining the Board room, usually upon committee 
business, emerging only when they receive word that an important matter requiring 
their votes is up for discussion. 



140 



EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 



they enact (particularly when these relate to matters of legislative 
rather than administrative character) should be before them in writing. 
Regardless of the waste of time entailed by the oral reading of reports 
and resolutions (a consideration of great importance in the case of the 
Board of Education) the desirability of the members having before 
them in writing exactly what they are voting upon, and the facilitation 
of discussion thereby, are so obvious and so well recognized in the prac- 
tice of all important legislative bodies as to require no demonstration. 

If these criteria be weH considered the present methods of pre- 
senting information to the members of the Board preparatory to their 
action are seriously defective. Substantially these methods are as 
follows : ~ 

a. Preparation of calendar 

Matters requiring the attention of the Board come before it, either 
as communications, resolutions of individual members, or reports of 
committees. These are continually being received by the Secretary. 
On noon of Saturday before the Wednesday on which is to be held the 
meeting of the Board, ^ the Secretary makes up a list of the communi- 
cations and reports received to date. 

The order of listing is as follows : 

(i) Communications — (a) From officers of the Board, (b) from 
other public officers, (c) from other sources. 

(2) Matters laid over from previous meeting. 

(3) Reports of Committees (each report being usually accompa- 

nied by a resolution). Grouped by Committees, the order 
being that in which the Committees meet during the recess 
of the Board. 

(4) Resolutions of Committees (unaccompanied by report). 

Grouping same as for reports. 

(5) Resolutions of individual members. 

This list, which is termed the calendar, is mimeographed by the 
secretary's office on Monday morning and mailed to each member of 
the Board on Monday afternoon, being therefore received by him on 
Tuesday morning. 

Communications, reports, etc., received between after the closing 
of the calendar on Saturday noon, and before the opening of the meet- 
ing on Wednesday afternoon, are similarly listed in a supplementary 
calendar, which is distributed to the members of the Board at the meet- 
ing. The consent of a majority of the members present is required for 
consideration of matters appearing on this calendar.^ 

In no case is a communication or report given in full on the calen- 

^ Minutes 191 1, p. 120. 

^ Formerly unanimous consent was required, but this was found to obstruct busi- 
ness and was changed in 1911. (See Minutes, 1911, pp. 120, 1551, 1650, 1696.) 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 141 

dar, but only a very brief abstract, seldom running" oyer four lines. 
Moreoyer, these abstracts are not always prepared \yith a yiew to mak- 
ing- clear the real point of the matter abstracted, but only its general 
character.^ 

The chief reliance of the members of the Board for exact informa- 
tion on the matter in hand is therefore the reading of the report or 
communication by the Secretary. Such reading is by no means always 
entirely adequate to a proper understanding of the matter in hand. 

b. Printing of reports, etc., before presentation 

Especially does the inadequacy of oral reading appear in financial, 
statistical and legislatiye matters. The Board itself has realized this 
from time to time, haying proyided for the printing and sending to each 
member, previous to action thereon by the Board, of the annual depart- 
mental estimate and of the monthly communication from the City Su- 
perintendent, setting forth the attendance and registration of the 
schools of the City for the month past with comparative figures for the 
preceding year. In all other cases, however, the Board waits until the 
meeting, at which the matter is presented orally by the Secretary, and 
then, if it finds itself unable to deal intelligently with the matter in 
oral form, orders the Secretary to have the report printed and a cop}'' 
sent to each member. This procedure necessarily delays the matter 
until the next meeting of the Board, usually two weeks hence, a delay 
sometimes highly undesirable. It is, furthermore, an exceptional pro- 
cedure, and consequently one which no member cares to initiate without 
excei^tionally good cause. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that 
the Board has not infrequently enacted resolutions of high importance, 
a close scrutiny of which would seem unquestionably to have been called 
for, merely upon an oral presentation by the Secretary. 

As instances of this practice are cited the adoption of the report 
establishing summer continuation high schools in 191 2,- the adoption 
in the same year ^ of the recpest for special revenue bonds to make 
possible increases in salary for 218 out of the 360 permanent clerical 
employees of the Board, the approval very recently ^ of several legis- 
lative bills making radical changes in the distribution of functions be- 
tween the Board and the Board of Superintendents, or the City Super- 
intendent, and the adoption, on March 12, 1913, of a $7,500,000 
corporate stock estimate. In short, the statement is apparently amply 
warranted that the Board not infrequently adopts resolutions of prime 

' Thus, a report from the Committee on the Nautical School (presented on Janu- 
ary 22, 1913) recommending the discontinuance of that school is listed in the calendar 
as follows : "No. 175 Relative to the discontinuance of the Nautical School," no indi- 
cation being given whether the Committee reports for or against such discontinuance 
or merely reports progress in the matter; and it is doubtful whether a majority of the 
members present were aware in advance of the real nature of the report. 

^ Meeting of June 12, 1912. * Meeting of June 26, 1912. 

* Meetings of February 26 and April 23, 1913. 



142 



EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 



importance without having before it in writing the language of the 
resolution or of the communication, report or other document to which 
the resolution may refer. 

To remedy this situation (and, incidentally, to save much of the 
valuable time of the Board now consumed in the reading of reports by 
the Secretary, the clarity of which, moreover, is usually in inverse pro- 
portion to their length) would involve but little additional expense and 
trouble. Each communication of other than merely routine character, 
such as is now printed in full in the minutes of the Board (such as, for 
example, an opinion of the Corporation Counsel), and each report of a 
committee should, as soon as received, be printed and sent to each mem- 
ber of the Board, an equal number of copies being printed at the same 
time for distribution to the members at the ensuing meeting of the 
Board. The composition of this matter would, of course, be held by 
the printer for use in printing the minutes, and the additional cost, 
therefore, would be merely for a slight amount of make-ready, paper 
and press work. 

This plan would have the further advantage that it would make 
possible the more speedy printing of the minutes of the Board. At the 
present time the printed minutes of a meeting are never in the hands of 
the Secretary before more than three weeks after the meeting; and an 
additional two days are recpiired for their delivery to the members of 
the Board. ^ The members of the Board at their meeting are thus 
never able to have before them the minutes of the preceding meeting, 
which it is obviously desirable they should have ; and occasionally they 
have not before them the minutes of even the second meeting preceding. 
It is hardly to be questioned that, with a better articulation between the 
Secretary and the printer, the time consumed in printing could, even 
under present methods, when not a single line is composed by the printer 
until after the meeting, be cut down considerably. Under the plan sug- 
gested, however, the bulk of the minutes would be in type, proof-read 
and corrected, before the meeting, and there would remain for printing 
merely the composition of the roll-call and special forms of action taken, 
and the make-ready. It should be possible under this plan for the 
minutes of a meeting to be in the hands of the members of the Board, 
and, indeed, of all those on the mailing list, within ten days after the 
meeting.^ 

This recommendation is believed to be valid, regardless of the con- 
tinuance or discontinuance of the exercise by the Board of all the mul- 
titudinous administrative functions now performed by it. If, however, 
it should divest itself of them, as recommended in the preceding divi- 
sion of this report, the plan here proposed for printing would natu- 

1 This time could doubtless be shortened if the distribution to the members of the 
Board were made direct from the printer's office immediate^ upon the completion of' 
printing. 

== See Part III, Chapter VI. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 143 

rally, through the great reduction in the volume of business, become 
much more easily operable. 

Section 3. The Board in action 

a. As an administrator. 

b. As a legislative and inspectorial body. 

It has been pointed out, in the preceding division of this report, that 
the Board of Education is, on the one hand, a body of large legislative 
and inspectorial powers, and, on the other, an administrative authority 
performing a multitude of routine duties ; and it has been contended 
that the fulhllment of only the first class of functions properly inheres 
in the Board. Because of these distinctions it has seemed well, in 
examining the Board as a working machine, to consider separately its 
operations as an administrative functionary and as a legislative and 
inspectorial body. 

Since the volume of administrative business is overwhelmingly 
greater than that of legislative or inspectorial business, it is the admin- 
istrative work of the Board which chiefl}' gives form and color to its 
proceedings. Its work as an administrator will therefore be first con- 
sidered. 

a. As an administrator 

1. Character of information used. 

2. Character of consideration given. 

3. Time spent in administrative business. 

I. Character of information used 

All administrative acts of the Board come before it in the shape of 
recommendations from the several standing committees, to each one of 
which is entrusted the supervision of a branch of administration, either 
business or educational. That such recommendations are presented to 
the Secretary of the Board in writing, but to the Board itself orally, 
has already been stated. 

It may be said that in general these reports, which form the sole 
basis of the Board's action, convey little intimation of the reasons or 
considerations underlying the recommendations made, even when the 
action taken is not called for by the ordinary routine of business, as, for 
example, the promotion of a clerk, or the designation of a particular 
school for the conduct of a special or experimental activity. In these 
cases, as in all others, the Board is merely informed by the committee 
that the committee recommends a particular action, or that it approves 
of the request made by the appropriate officer of the Board for such 
action. No private member of the Board can possibly exercise intelli- 
gent judgment on any of the matters so presented, unless he rises to 



144 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

a question of information. To ask questions on any appreciable por- 
tion of a calendar containing, perhaps, 125 items, is, however, equally 
impossible. 

2. Character of consideration given 

Such being the case, it follows that intelligent action by the Board 
on its administrative business, is, at least under present methods of pro- 
cedure, out of the question. It may well be argued, moreover, that 
the number of administrative items is so exceedingly large that no 
matter how fully the requisite information might be presented to the 
members of the Board, real consideration of them in the time at the 
disposal of the average Board member would be a physical impossi- 
bility. 

It seems possible to state, therefore, that the matters of administra- 
tive detail coming before the Board are so numerous and, with insig- 
nificantly few exceptions, so petty, that it is obviously utterly impossible 
for any of the members of the Board, except the few having a com- 
mittee or personal interest in it, to have any information upon a par- 
ticular matter. The action of the Board in all this class of matters, 
constituting, as established by the table above presented, overwhelm- 
ingly the larger part of the business coming before the Board, must 
therefore of necessity be a purely perfunctory and pro forma ratifica- 
tion of the action of the several standing committees. 

Of this conclusion the minutes of the Board furnish indubitable 
proof. A page by page examination of the minutes for six consecutive 
meetings in 1911,-^ for example, disclosed that there were reported by 
committees at those meetings a total of 348 resolutions. Of these all 
but five were adopted unanimously at the meeting at which they were 
introduced without discussion.^ 

A similar examination of the minutes for five consecutive meetings, 
late in 1912,^ yields an equally decisive result, 192 out of 194 resolu- 
tions on administrative matters reported by committee having been 
adopted by unanimous vote and without discussion upon their first 
presentation. The evidence of these two sets of figures, chosen at ran- 
dom, could be duplicated by similar figures obtained from any part of 
the minutes. 

The totally perfunctory character of the Board's approval of com- 
mittee reports on routine administrative matters is also^ strikingly re- 
vealed by the practice which obtains at meetings of the Board of voting 
on a number of such matters as one. This is effected by one of the 
members moving that a given number of items on the calendar, desig- 
nated by numbers, be acted upon as one. This motion being adopted, 

^Meetings of July 12, September 13, 20, and 27, October 11 and 25. 

2 These five all related to matters of importance. None of the five was defeated. 
Three were adopted with a few dissenting votes and the other two laid over and sub- 
sequently adopted unanimously. 

^ Meetings of September 12, 18 and 25, October 9 and 23. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 145 

as many as ten or even thirty resolutions are enacted by one vote, 
usually without any of them being read by the Secretary. No record 
is made in the minutes of this procedure, and it is consequently impossi- 
ble to present exact data as to its use. It was made use of at least once, 
however, at every meeting held during December, 19 12, and January, 
February, March and April, 19 13. 

In not a few cases committees, being certain from long experience 
that the Board will exercise no revision of their action, take and com- 
plete important administrative steps, and later submit to the Board a 
motion requesting ratification of their action. The futility of such a 
procedure was strikingly exemplified at a meeting of the Board held 
December 26, 1912, at which the Committee on Special Schools re- 
quested ratification of its action in transferring one of the attendance 
officers of the Board to the Permanent Census Board. To the surprise 
of the committee, one of the members strongly objected to this trans- 
fer, and invoked the judgment of the Board upon it. The chairman of 
the committee, in opposing unfavorable action by the Board, advanced 
as the chief reason for his stand the fact that the transfer had already 
been complete for several days and could not now be cancelled without 
formal action on the part of the Municipal Civil Service Commission. 
The protesting member was consequently constrained to withdraw his 
objection. 

^Vith such perfunctory methods of procedure obtaining, it is not 
surprising that occasionally the Board passes a resolution handed up 
by a committee by mistake, in opposition to the real wishes of the 
committee, and that a formal recision of the action taken is subse- 
quently necessary.^ 

3. Time spent in administrative business 

In spite of the fact that its action upon the great mass of petty 
administrative details that comes before it is thus absolutely perfunc- 
tory and pro forma, yet, because of the overwhelmingly numerical pre- 
ponderance of such details in the total of matters presented to the 
Board (as established by the table in the preceding division), even such 
perfunctory action upon them consumes far the greater share of the 
time of the Board. Even when the process of "bunching" resolutions, 
above described, is freely employed, the great number of items involved, 
averaging at least 75 per meeting, makes the consumption of much 
time in the mere mechanical operation of approval inevitable, in addi- 
tion to the time required for the reading of the resolutions and reports, 
necessary in many cases. 

At none of the meetings held during December, 1912 — March, 1913, 

^At its meeting of January 8, 1913, the Board enacted a resolution (item 59 on 
its calendar) submitted by the Committee on Supplies ; but later in the meeting the 
Secretary announced that that resolution had been introduced "inadvertently" and 
was of no effect. No record of this illuminating bit of procedure appears on the 
minutes. 



146 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

were more than a half dozen or so of the items on the calendar of a class 
other than administrative routine. The total consideration accorded 
these items was not more than half an hour at each meeting, yet each 
of the meetings in question lasted at least two hours. If these meetings 
be taken as fairly representative it might be stated that the time devoted 
by the Board to the perfunctory enactment of resolutions regarding 
matters of routine administration which do not in their nature call for 
action by the Board, constitutes about three-quarters of the time spent 
by the Board in actual session.^ 

b. The Board as a legislative and inspectorial body 

1. Effects of performance of administrative routine. 

2. Character of legislative information used. 

3. Character of consideration given. 

I. Effects of performance of administrative routine 

Except in the matter of amendments to its by-laws, the Board has 
failed to draw any distinction between, or to provide any different 
methods of procedure for, its routine administrative duties, on the one 
hand, and its legislative and inspectorial duties, on the other. Since 
matters of administrative routine greatly overshadow matters of legis- 
lation and supervision in volume, and in the time consumed by the 
Board for their transaction, the procedure and general character of 
action of the Board on the latter class of matters is inevitably largely 
influenced, if not, indeed, almost completely determined, by its pro- 
cedure and manner of action on the former. In several important re- 
spects, this influence may be very distinctly traced. 

(a) Lack of time for legislative work 

First, and most obvious, is the fact that the time consumed by the 
Board in administrative work is so great as to leave an altogether 
inadequate amount of time remaining for its legislative and supervisory 
work. Making use of the estimate of distribution of time above 
made, it requires no argument to prove that half an hour fortnightly 
is an absurdly small amount of time for a body of forty-six to spend 
in legislating for and overseeing the educational system of the City of 
New York. 

The inadequacy of the time available for legislative work is strongly 

1 The remedy recommended in this report for all the evils resulting from the per- 
formance by the Board of administrative acts is as already indicated the delegation 
of that performance to the paid officers or the committees of the Board. If, however, 
that recommendation be regarded unfavorably, the wasteful expenditure of time in 
perfunctory action on routine matters could still be obviated by a frank recognition 
that ordinarily the Board cannot and does not pretend to give any real consideration 
to these matters. If the reports of committees were printed in full and distributed to 
the members before the meeting, as above suggested, it would be practicable to con- 
sider every report and accompanying resolution as approved, unless negative action 
upon it were called for by a member. Thus only contentious matters would come be- 
fore the Board for deliberative decision. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 



147 



felt by not a few of the members of the Board themselves. Several 
months ago ^ there was introduced in the Board a motion directing the 
Committee on By-Laws and Legislation to "consider ways and means 
by which the calendar of the Board meetings can be made less cumber- 
some, through the elimination of matters that can be properly and more 
expeditiously attended to by the appropriate committees." ^ 

A gentleman now and for some years past a member of the Board, 
and long the chairman of its Committee on By-Laws, has declared ^ 
that the abandonment by the Board of its functions of routine adminis- 
tration "would save a great deal of time and would leave the Board 
of Education more opportunity to discuss fully and freely many mat- 
ters of importance upon which action is taken sometimes too hastily." 

This utterly inadequate time available for legislative and inspec- 
torial work is rendered still more inadecjuate because no regular 
machinery exists in the Board for giving precedence to such work over 
petty matters of administration. The order of listing items on the 
calendar, as already indicated, bears no relation whatever to their 
urgency or importance ; and it is in their order on the calendar that 
items are normally considered by the Board. Any change in this order 
requires the initiative of some member of the Board, who, not unnat- 
urally, will be unwilling, except in a very clear case, to place himself 
in the position of asking to have a matter in which he or his com- 
mittee is particularly interested given precedence over matters entered 
by the members of other committees. Consequently, it may well hap- 
pen that, by a mere chronological accident, consideration of a matter of 
high importance will be delayed till the fag end of a meeting, when 
some of the members have left and those that remain are, partially at 
least, disabled from giving the matter careful and thorough considera- 
tion because of their natural impatience to get home. That such a 
possibility is by no means purely imaginary was emphatically illustrated 
at the meeting held January 22, 1913. The calendar of that meeting 
contained 176 items, 126 of them being resolutions presented by com- 
mittees. The first four of these resolutions had been laid over from pre- 
ceding meetings and were of prime importance. Of the remaining 122, 
however (numbered 55 to 176), only the following have been found, 
after careful examination, to be of other than a merely routine character : 

No. 134 — Requesting the Board of Estimate and Apportionment to authorize the 
issue of $57,960 corporate stock, as an additional amount, for the general construction, 
etc., of P. S. IIS, Man. 

Nos. 149-155 — Reports from Committee on By-Laws and Legislation regarding 
salaries and qualifications of sundry teaching positions. 

No. 162- — Relative to the course of study in elementary schools (consideration de- 
ferred by request of committee, pending printing of report). 

' INIeeting of February 13, 1913, Minutes, p. 304. 

^ The motion was referred to the Committee on By-Laws, which has not up to the 
present writing (August, 1913) reported upon it. 

^ Hon. Robert L. Harrison, in a letter to the Committee on School Inquiry, April 
II, 1913. 



148 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

No. 175 — Relative to the discontinuance of the New York Nautical School. 
No. 176 — Report of Special Committee appointed to confer with the Board of 
Estimate and Apportionment regarding two items in the budget for 1913. 

Of the 122 new resolutions on the calendar then, these, which pri- 
marily demanded the deliberative action of the Board, were among the 
last forty. Every one of them, except No. 175, was unanimously 
adopted without discussion. 

Of these items, furthermore, one of particular importance was, 
without doubt, No. 175, relative to the discontinuance of the New 
York Nautical School. While the resolution presented was merely a 
recjuest upon the Legislature to make the maintenance of the Nautical 
School optional with and not mandatory upon the Board, the report 
which accompanied it definitely committed the Board to the abandon- 
ment of the school. Yet this resolution and report were next to the 
last item on the calendar. They came up for consideration at about 
6 :20 P. M. The chairman and a member of the committee on the 
Nautical School and one other member urged their adoption, speaking 
in all about seven minutes. There were several points in their ad- 
dresses which so obviously called for question by one not familiar with 
the matter ^ that it is difficult to believe that all of the members of the 
Board present were thoroughly convinced. The lateness of the hour, 
and the great length of time required for a thorough threshing out of 
the issues involved combined apparently to discourage any member 
from prolonging the meeting by precipitating a discussion, and the 
resolution was consequently adopted unanimously, without any further 
deliberation. There can be little doubt that had this matter come up 
at the beginning of, or, at least, appreciably earlier in the meeting, the 
discussion and perhaps the action upon it would have been of a much 
more deliberative character.^ 

A similar instance can be cited from the meeting of the Board held 
on March 12, 1913. One of the most important items on the entire 
calendar was a report from the Committee on Buildings, presenting 
for adoption an estimate of the corporate stock required by the Board 
for the year 191 3, involving a total of $7,500,000, and aimed to super- 
sede the corporate stock estimate adopted by the Board in 1912. Yet 

1 Thus the chairman of the committee stated that the commandant of the school 
believed the course of study in large measure inappropriate to the purpose of the 
school and unduly wasteful. This would seem automatically to suggest the question, 
not touched upon by any of the speakers, whether a radical revision of the course of 
study would not remedy most of the conditions upon which the argument for dis- 
continuing the school was based. 

^ In this particular case the absurdity of having so important a matter placed at 
the end of the meeting was further emphasized by the utter waste of approximately 
a quarter of an hour earlier in the meeting by the reading in full of a report of the 
Committee on High Schools regarding the low standard of English speech obtaining 
among the population of the city — a lucubration which, while eloquent and pregnant 
with valuable suggestion, was utterly incapable of forming the subject of action by 
the Board, and could consequently have been perused by the members at their leisure 
when printed in the minutes of the Board. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 149 

this item came up for discussion in its regular order on the calendar 
after 5:45, when (as was revealed by the necessity of having thirty-one 
members present in order to adopt an amendment to the by-laws, which 
came up a few moments later) only twenty-nine of the members were 
present. 

A fuller examination of the minutes of the Board would doubtless 
reveal a fairly large number of cases in which the failure to provide 
for the early consideration of important matters has resulted in a total 
failure on the part of a large portion of the members of the Board 
not only to discuss, but even to acquire any familiarity with the matter 
in hand. 

The primary change recommended in this report, namely, the dele- 
gation by the Board of all but its primary legislative functions to its 
officers or committees, would without cjuestion effectually remedy the 
undesirable situation here described by eliminating all routine matters 
from the calendar. Even without such radical action, however, there 
seems no reason why some regular procedure may not be provided by 
which, without the initiative of any private member, important matters 
shall be given precedence on the calendar. The most simple method to 
effectuate this would probably be the constitution of a rules, or "steer- 
ing" committee, which might be composed of the chairmen of the sev- 
eral standing committees with the President of the Board as chairman. 

(b) Lack of interest 

The second result of the presence upon the calendar of the Board 
of an overwhelming preponderance of routine matters in each of 
which no more than a few of the members can have any possible in- 
terest, is a loss of interest in the proceedings of the Board by its mem- 
bers. This is manifested alike in the conduct of those members who 
attend the meetings and those who frecjuently absent themselves. 

Observation of a dozen successive meetings of the Board during 
the months December, 1912, to April, 1913, disclosed the fact that in 
every meeting of the Board there are long and well-defined periods in 
which the proceedings are, to all intents and purposes, a mechanical dia- 
logue between the Secretary and the President, the former reading the 
resolutions presented, and the latter, after putting the question, usually 
without receiving any very audible response, declaring them adopted, 
the members meanwhile engaging themselves in private conversation 
with each other or with officers of the Board, or interested employees, 
or outsiders. With such a state of order prevailing, it is well within 
the bounds of possibility, not to say probability, for the Board to pass 
without any consideration whatever, under the impression that merely 
a routine matter is involved, a resolution which may be of high im- 
portance, either because of the particular matter involved, or because 
of the precedent which it sets. There is nothing to prevent such a 



1 50 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION \ 

contingency except the alertness and conscientiousness of some private 
member, or perhaps of the President.^ 

There can be Httle question, moreover, that the failure of some of 
the members of the Board to attend its meetings with as great regu- 
larity as could be desired is partly, if not largely, due to the fact that 
those members know in advance that a large part of the time which 
they spend at the meeting will be occupied in utterly useless pro forma 
approval of committee reports, and to the fact that they have no assur- 
ance whatever that any one of the multifarious items on the Board's 
calendar is of a character requiring any serious consideration or delib- 
eration. The brevity of the abstracts in which committee reports are 
summarized on the calendar sometimes makes it difficult, as above 
pointed out. to ascertain, even from a careful reading of the calendar 
(at best tedious and confusing) the exact nature of the matter to be 
discussed. 

The conclusion seems warranted, therefore, that the excision of all 
routine administration from the Board's functions, as above recom- 
mended, would result in raising the level of interest taken by members 
in the proceedings of the Board. It is worthy, also, of consideration, 
whether the added dignity and importance which would come to the 
deliberations of the Board through such a change might not have the 
effect of making membership in the Board attractive to the type of 
citizen who, because of the heavy pressure of business or public duties, 
would feel his time too valuable for even a small part of it to be spent 
upon such matters of petty routine as now occupy so large a part of 
the time devoted to meetings of the Board. 

(c) Deference to committees 

Still a third result of great importance may be pointed to as ema- 
nating from the presence on the calendar of the Board of so large a 
number of routine items. The action of the Board upon such matters 
is, and must be, as above demonstrated, wholly perfunctory, a mere 
pro forma ratification of the action of the committee under whose 
jurisdiction the matter comes. A perfectly natural and predictable 
result of this practice is the development on the part of members and 
committees of a feeling of diplomatic courtesy, which militates against 
real consideration by the Board of committee recommendations ; a feel- 
ing that each committee is, within its own sphere, to all intents and 
purposes the Board itself; and a consequent resentment on the part of 
committee members toward any attempt by a member of the Board not 
on the committee to question its action or recommendation on the floor. 

The degree to which this attitude is cherished by some of the mem- 
bers of the Board was strikingly revealed at the meeting of the Board 

1 Within the past few months (i. e., February-May, 1913) the President of the 
Board has on not a few occasions found it necessary to call to the attention of the 
house resolutions of moment which, but for his vigilance, would have been enacted 
pro forma. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 



151 



held January 8, 1913. The Committee on Sites, having presented for 
adoption a resolution for the purchase of a particular site, a memljer re- 
quested that the committee present to the Board statistical information 
bearing on the necessity for such purchase. Upon the committee mem- 
ber ha\ing the matter in charge confessing" his inability to supply such 
information at that time, the interested member requested that the 
matter be laid over until the following meeting, when such information 
might be forthcoming. This request seemed so unreasonable to another 
member of the Committee on Sites, and so at variance with the pre- 
rogatives of a member, that he moved that this memljer be appointed 
a committee of one to investigate and report to the Board the existence 
of any facts tending to justify his lack of confidence in the committee.^ 
In the presence of such a spirit as this a private member will hardly 
feel inclined to question the report of a committee merely because he is 
not convinced by the facts, or lack of facts, presented by the committee. 
]\Iost members, certainly all those not of an aggressive turn, will accept 
without question the report of the committee, unless they have very 
good reason for not doing so. 

The methods used by the Board in its perfunctory action upon the 
multitude of administrative trifles that come before it has then three 
definite efifects upon its action in its legislative or supervisory capacity : 

(a) The time of the Board which should be devoted to legislative 
or supervisory action is squandered. 

(b) The attention which should be paid b}^ the members to such 
action is dissipated. 

(c) The spirit of inquiry and alert examination of committee 
recommendations, which should be characteristic of such action, is made 
almost impossible. 

The joint result of all three of these conditions would seem to be 
that the Board fails to give proper consideration or attention to those 
large legislative and inspectorial matters, which, as above urged, consti- 
tute its main justification for existence. It remains to be considered 
whether the actual facts evidence that such a result has ensued. 

2. Character of legislative information used 

Before considering the amount of deliberation actually given by the 
Board to its legislative and supervisory business during a representa- 
tive period, it is illuminating to examine into the nature of the informa- 
tion commonly presented to the Board (almost invariably, of course, in 
the form of committee reports) as a basis for its action with reference 
to such business. In this connection it is important to bear in mind 
that, whatever the adequacy of such reports in themselves, in all but a 

' The Minutes of the Board make no mention of this motion, recording merely 
that "discussion" ensued. Minutes, 1913, p. 50. 



152 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

very few cases they are, as above pointed out, presented to the Board 
only in oral form. 

The reports usually presented by the Committee on By-Laws and 
Legislation, recommending that the Board express its approval or dis- 
approval of pending legislative bills, would seem, in many cases at 
least, markedly inadequate in that they fail to present the actual lan- 
guage of the bill in question.^ That the exact wording of a bill may 
often be of prime importance is, we think, hardly to be doubted. 

Another class of matters, supervisory rather than legislative in char- 
acter, upon which the reports usually presented to the Board would 
seem to be inadequate, is that of the disciplining of teachers. These 
reports merely state the verdict arrived at by the committee, and the 
action recommended, without any discussion of the evidence. 

Li the same category might be placed certain of the reports recom- 
mending the rejection of nominations to teaching positions made by the 
Board of Superintendents. It cannot be said that, as a general rule, the 
reason for such rejection is not adequately stated. At least one in- 
stance has been found, however, without any examination for the pur- 
pose having been made, in which a committee (that on Elementary 
Schools) recommended the rejection of a nomination without giving 
any reason whatever for the recommendation, the report being adopted 
by the Board without any question. It was only by repeated inquiry 
of several different officers of the Board that we were able to ascertain 
that the reason for the recommendation was that there was good rea- 
son to believe that the nominee was a married woman.^ 

It is perhaps, however, in its action on financial matters involving 
legislative considerations that the inadequacy of the information pre- 
sented to the Board is most apparent. If there be one report rather 
than another which, it would seem without question, should be before 
the Board in such form as to bring out with the greatest possible clear- 
ness the various elements involved, that report is the annual budget esti- 
mate of the Department. 

It has already been pointed out elsewhere in this report ^ that that 
document, as drawn up in 191 2, did not at certain points present suffi- 
cient facts to justify the size of the estimates made. Entirely aside 
from their statistical validity, however, it is thought that the form in 
which the estimates were presented to and acted upon by the Board 
in that year was very imperfectly calculated to assist the members of 
the Board in evaluating the various proposals presented for enlargement 
and extension of activity. The information necessary for an intelligent 
judgment was, in some cases, buried beneath a mass of detailed figures 

1 A copy of each bill introduced into the Legislature affecting educational matters 
is now sent to each member of the Board immediately upon its introduction ; but the 
bill may not be reported upon by the Committee on By-Laws until several weeks later, 
-when the members have, in all likelihood, forgotten the wording. 

- The case referred to may be found in Minutes, iQio, page 458. 

^ See Part I, Chap. IV. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 



153 



having little if any legislative significance; in no case were the estimates 
of the cost of a projected enlargement of one of the activities of the 
Department collated in any one place, but were scattered under two, 
and, in some cases, three or four heads,^ and the cost of enlargements 
in size of activities, as now conducted, was not, in the main totals, 
clearly distinguished from the cost of proposed innovations in the con- 
duct of those activities. In short, it may be said that the extraction 
from the estimate of the facts upon which the action of the Board 
should have been based was a matter of some dithculty and considerable 
inconvenience. 

Moreover, as of perhaps greater importance than any of the fore- 
going defects, it should be pointed out that there was not presented, in 
any part of the estimate, any information regarding the efficiency or 
success in the past of the activities for whose future maintenance the 
Board was asked to provide. In the absence of any independent offi- 
cers of investigation, such as it has above been recommended should be 
employed by the Board, virtually the only information upon which the 
Board can estimate the value of the activities conducted by it is that 
contained in the reports of the City Superintendent and, still more, of his 
chief subordinates. Until 1912, however, these reports were laid be- 
fore the Board only in the form of an abstract contained in the report 
of the City Superintendent, which was not, moreover, presented to the 
Board until several months after the adoption by it of the budget esti- 
mates. Even in 1912, when the original reports were laid before the 
Board, none was presented before the adoption of the estimate. As a 
result, the Board, in passing upon the estimate for the year 1913, had 
before it no careful and detailed report regarding the conduct of those 
activities of a date later than July 31, 1911.^ 

The facts given regarding the defectiveness of the estimates pre- 
sented to the Board for consideration are believed strongly to indicate 
that there was very little expectation on the part of the educational and 
fiscal officers and committees who framed those estimates that the 
Board would give to them any very careful or minute examination. 

The same may be said of the corporate stock estimate for the year 
1911-1912, with tentative estimates for 1912-1915, presented to the 
Board February 6th, 1911.^ That estimate proposed that the Board 
of Education ask for issues of corporate stock amounting in all to over 
$45,813,000 and was therefore one of the most important items of 
business ever brought before the Board of Education; yet, in the words 

^ With reference to every activity the estimates are presented separately for sal- 
aries and for all other expenses because of the legal distinction between the General 
and Special Funds. In some cases the expenses for a single activity under the Special 
Fund are again separated under several heads, while, on the other hand, under a few 
heads (e. g., cartage of supplies), no attempt is made to estimate the distribution of 
cost among the several activities covered. 

^Though the annual report is officially dated July 31, in practice it covers the 
summer activities which close about August 31. 

* Minutes, pp. 217-238. 



154 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

of a member of the Board, ^ "with only a minority of the recommen- 
dations is sufficient information given to enable a member of the Board 
of Education to form a judgment upon the necessity for a new build- 
ing. In many cases no information at all is given; for example, on 
page 1 1 of the printed report ^ are requests for eight new buildings in 
the Borough of Queens without a single fact attached to show the 
necessity for any one of the buildings. On page 12 are six other 
recommendations equally destitute of supporting evidence. Further- 
more as to sites, only round figures were given (namely, $1,000,000 
for each of the years 191 1 and 1912 and $500,000 for 1913, 1914 and 
1915), without any basis whatever for the estimates being presented. 

The substitute corporate stock estimate for 1911-1915 adopted by 
the Board March 29, 1911,^ contained somewhat fuller information 
on several of the points above mentioned. Nevertheless, the informa- 
tion given was presented with a degree of clarity and fullness hardly 
adequate for any purpose other than to give assurance that the Com- 
mittee on Buildings, which prepared the estimate, did not act entirely 
without a fact basis. The same may be said, though perhaps with less 
truth, of the information presented in connection with the corporate 
stock estimates adopted June 12, 1912, and March 12, 1913.^ In none 
of these estimates moreover, was any adequate explanation given of 
the manner in which the committee had determined upon the order of 
urgency of the items presented. 

Similarly, the resolutions adopted by the Board at its meetings of 
November 27 and December 11 and 26, 1912,^ requesting imme- 
diate authorization of corporate stock for the construction of five new 
buildings, presented no adequate grounds for the urgency of the 
request. A statement of such grounds would seem, however, to have 
been imperatively demanded in view of the fact that all but one of the 
items for which immediate authorization on the ground of urgent need 
was requested had been reported by the ver}^ same committee in the 
regular corporate stock estimate a few months previous to be far down 
on the list in the order of urgenc)^ 

A still more striking and, because more a part of the routine of the 
Board, more characteristic type of report is that recommending that 
the Board request the issue of special revenue bonds for purposes 
unforeseen at the time of the preparation of the annual departmental 
estimate or to supply deficits in funds provided for at that time. No 
argument is necessary, we think, to prove that in every case in which 
the Board makes such request it should have before it a clear statement 
of the reason either why the purpose for which the request is made was 
not foreseen when the estimate was made, or, if foreseen and provided 

^ Hon. John Martin, in a memorandum submitted to the Committee on Finance 
Feb. IS, 1911. ' 

' 1911 Minutes, p. 225. ' Minutes, 1912, pp. 939-978; 1913, pp. 422-442 

* Minutes, pp. 939-979. 
^ Minutes, pp. 2103, 2186 ff, 2281 fif. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 155 

for, why sufficient provision was not made. Yet it is found, upon 
examination of the requests for special revenue bonds made during the 
years 1910 and 191 1, numbering twenty in all, that in only four cases 
was there any attempt made at such an explanation. 

A matter very closely analogous to that of the requests for special 
revenue bonds is a request for a transfer of funds. Here, too, what is 
involved is virtually a modification of the departmental estimate and, 
consequently, the same kind of explanation is plainly called for. Here, 
too, however, the Board seldom, if ever, has before it, as a basis for 
the request which it makes xipon the fiscal authorities of the city, any 
adequate statement of the reason why the transfer is necessary. The 
reason usually stated by the Committee on Finance in its report recom- 
mending the request is merely that the fund to which the transfer is 
requested has been found inadequate and that the fund from which the 
transfer is requested has been found more than sufficient. 

It thus happened that in 191 1 no less than $11,500 was by six suc- 
cessive transfers transferred from the fund "General Supplies — Lec- 
tures," which was but $26,700 in all. Yet the form in which the reports 
recommending these requests were presented allowed of no indication of 
the total amount of transfers from the given fund to date nor of the 
proportion which such transfers bore to the whole fund, facts without 
which any real consideration of the advisability of the transfer or of 
the conditions which made it possible was out of the question. 

In the matter of site selections, too, the information upon which the 
Board acts is hardly calculated to make possible any actual considera- 
tion by the Board. A report urging the selection of a site cannot, of 
course, well present any reason for the recommendation beyond the 
opinion of the committee, based upon first hand knowledge of the con- 
ditions. It can, however, and we believe it should, inform the Board as 
to how urgent or immediate the need for the particular site is, in order 
that the Board may control the general policy of site acquisition. Thus 
a report urging the selection of a particular site and stating that the 
present rate of increase of population warranted the belief that such 
site would become necessary within, for example, four years, could, 
wholly irrespective of the merits of the particular site selected, con- 
stitute a basis for discussion, by members of the Board entirely ignorant 
of that particular site, as to whether the figures presented did point to 
the prol)a1)le need alleged, and whether, on general considerations, the 
acquisition of sites four years in advance of urgent need was advisable. 
^^'e find, however, that in virtually no case of a site selection within the 
past three years has anv such information been presented to the Board, 
the report of the committee usually stating merely that the committee 
has given attention to the recommendation of the Local School Board 
or the Board of Superintendents regarding the necessity of a site in 
a particular locality and accordingly recommends the selection of a 
particular site. 



156 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

When, furthermore, the Committee on Sites recommends that the 
selection of a site already determined upon b}^ the Board and for the 
acquisition of which proceedings have already been begun shall be 
rescinded, and another site substituted, fairly definite reasons should 
be stated for the change, designed to give assurance that the former 
recommendation of the committee was not made hastily or without a 
survey of all the factors involved. We find, however, that here too 
the reports of the Committee on Sites frecjuently fail to present infor- 
mation of this character.^ 

A most striking illustration is to be found in the report of the Com- 
mittee on Sites presented May 11, 1910,- recommending the rescission 
of twenty-two site selections, of which one had been made only two 
months previously and eight others within only the preceding six 
months, upon the recommendation of the very committee which now 
urged the rescission of those selections. To point out that some expla- 
nation of the reason for such complete reversal of policy was called for 
under the circumstances would seem a work of supererogation. Yet 
the Committee on Sites presented its recommendation without any sup- 
porting reasoning whatever, and it was only after the report had been 
laid over at the recjuest of some of the members, who were apparently 
not entirely satisfied with the Committee's statement, that the Commit- 
tee, before the next meeting, amended its report by inserting therein a 
brief statement of the reasons which prompted it.^ 

Without, therefore, endeavoring to trace any relation of cause and 
effect between it and the conditions set forth in the preceding division, 
it may, we think, be stated that in general the nature of the reports 
presented to the Board by its committee on matters involving legislative 
and supervisory considerations is not such as to furnish a proper basis 

^ See, for example, reports of Committee on Sites, June 8 and December 14, 1910 
(Minutes 1046 and 2148 f), September 13 and November 8, 1911 (Minutes 1361 and 
1652), June 26, 1912 (Minutes 1164). The last-mentioned report recommends the 
rescission of the selection of a site for which funds had already been authorized by the 
Board of Estimate and Apportionment, yet gives as the reason for its recommendation 
merelv that it was reached "on further consideration." 

2 Minutes, 897. 

^ While it is here urged that reasons should be presented to the Board as a basis 
for its action, it must be confessed that on those occasions on which the Committee on 
Sites, for example, has presented to the Board a reason for its recommendation, the 
character of consideration given by the Board has hardly been such as to warrant the 
belief that much attention was paid to the reason given. In this matter of rescissions 
of site locations, for example, the Committee, on March 29, April 12, May 10 and June 
4, 191 1 (Minutes 494, 593, 753, 981), presented reports recommending the selection of 
certain sites in place of those previously selected by the Board upon its recommendation, 
giving as the reason therefor that upon consultation with either a local school board 
or a member of the supervisory staff of the Board or the Real Estate Appraiser of the 
Finance Department, the substitution had been deemed advisable. The question must 
certainly have presented itself to any member listening to the reading of these reports 
by the secretary why the advice of the several functionaries mentioned was not sought 
previous to the original recommendation of the Committee. So far as the minutes 
show, however, this question, if it did occur to any member, was not deemed by him 
of sufficient importance to warrant his questioning the wisdom of the Committee on 
Sites by propounding it. 






ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 157 

for deliberation by the Board, even should the other elements entering 
into the conduct of the Board's business permit of such deliberation. 

3. Character of consideration given 

As the character of the information presented to the Board for its 
action is commonly of such a character that no deliberative action can 
be based upon it, we should expect that members of the Board who 
are called to pass upon these matters would attempt to amplify their 
information by asking questions of the several committee chairmen. A 
total absence of such interrogation may be taken, we think, in connec- 
tion with matters of high legislative importance, as conclusively indi- 
cating that the action of the Board on such matters is not only not de- 
liberative, but is wholly perfunctory. With a view to ascertaining the 
extent of such deliberation or interrogation upon the floor of the Board, 
upon matters of legislative and inspectorial import, the minutes of the 
Board for the years 1910 and 191 1, and, to a certain extent for the 
year 1912, have been carefully examined. Inasmuch as no stenographic 
record of the proceedings of the Board is kept, it is. of course, impossi- 
ble to measure with any exactness (except by personal observation, in- 
capable of verification and necessarily so limited in extent as to be 
inconclusive), the amount of time actually spent by the Board in such 
deliberation, or to obtain an idea of the character of the discussion had. 
The minutes of the Board do. however, note wherever discussion of any 
kind is had upon a motion. It is, therefore, possible to state with posi- 
tiveness the number of matters of a given class in which any discussion 
at all was had. and also the number of members who' participated to 
any extent \vhatever in such discussion. It is to these cjuestions that 
our examination of the minutes has necessarily been confined. The fol- 
lowing table presents the result of our investigation: 

Table Showing Extent of Discussion and Division by the Board of Education 
on Selected Classes of Matters Reported to it During 1910, 191 1, 1912 

Class of Matters. 5^ ^2 o.iJ o-iJS o"0 &■§• 

(1910, 1911 and 1912) 
Expressing approval or disapproval of pending 

legislative bills, ordinances, etc 22 3 2 11 17 

Selecting sites for school buildings 21 i i 3 I 

Rescinding selection of sites for school buildings. 13 1040 

Requesting special revenue bonds 27 i o 4 o 

(1910 and 1911) 
Amending By-Laws regarding 

Salaries 19 5 o 22 o 

Qualifications for positions IS o o o 

Other matters 32 3 o 21 

Change in course of study 17 i i 7 

Requests for transfer of funds 27 i o 8 o 

Total 203 16 4 80 18 



158 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

A few details regarding some of the matters expressed in the above 
table are illuminating. The two reports on legislative bills which were 
discussed had reference to the proposed revision of the city charter 
which was agitated in the Legislature during the sessions of 1910 and 
191 1. That rendered May 11, 1910 (Minutes, page 883 ff) was dis- 
cussed at some length, while that rendered May 10, 191 1, containing 
sixteen separate recommendations for amendment to the proposed char- 
ter, was discussed only on one point by two members of the Board not 
on the committee. Even their discussion is surprising, inasmuch as the 
recommendations of the committee were not before the Board in 
writing.^ 

A matter of great legislative importance which does not figure in 
any of the classes of the above table was a resolution adopted by the 
Board June 12, 1912,^ authorizing the establishment of two summer 
continuation high schools. The failure of the Board to deliberate upon 
this matter is especially notable in that continuation high schools were 
a totally new departure in the educational system of the city, that the 
funds for their operation had been specifically denied to the Board by 
the fiscal authorities of the city in the preparation of the 1912 budget, 
and that the insertion of the item for such high schools in the estimate 
for that budget had also been made without any discussion whatever 
by the Board as a whole. 

The lack of discussion of important committee reports with refer- 
ence to policies of site accjuisition in the years 1910 and 191 1 has 
already been referred to.^ 

Of the financial matters falling within the figures above given, one 
may justify special attention. This was the resolution adopted June 
26, 1912, requesting the issue of $44,470 of Special Revenue Bonds,* 
for the purpose of increasing the salaries of clerical employees of the 
Board, and employing additional help. This resolution, it should be 
noted, called for increases in the salaries of not less than 218 of the 
360 permanent clerical employees of the Board, of whom 15 were 
already receiving salaries of $2,000 or over, the applicability to Avhom 
of the statement made by the Committee on Supplies in its report ^ that 
the increases urged were imperatively needed to prevent the impairment 
of the department's efficiency by the transfer of its clerks to higher 
salaried positions in other departments was, to put it mildly, open to 
question. It should be noted also that one of the increases recom- 
mended was for $750,^ and another for $600, while not less than 24 
of them were for sums of $350 or over. It would certainly seem that 
recommendations for such unusually large increases, unusually large 
even for a regular annual estimate, but little short of extraordinary 

^ Minutes, p. 747 fif. " Minutes, page loog. ^ See above, p. 155. 

^Minutes, p. T146. '' Id., p. 750. 

" Recommended for a clerk in the office of the City Superintendent then receiving 
$7,650. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 159 

when made the basis of a request for the issue of special revenue 
bonds, should have called forth on the floor of the Board, even if not 
adverse criticism, at least pointed interrogatories. 

Another very striking illustration of the absence of deliberation on 
financial matters of high importance, which occurred so recently as 
not to fall within the above tabulation, was given at the meeting of the 
Board held March 12, 19 13. At this meeting the Committee on Build- 
ings presented an estimate of the corporate stock recjuirements of the 
Board for the calendar year 19 13, designed to supersede the estimate 
adopted by the Board in June, 1912.^ Though considerable discussion 
was had with reference to the failure of the committee to include a 
vocational school item in this estimate, no discussion whatever was 
given to the order of priority or urgency of the thirty or more items 
in the estimate; and indeed no such discussion by the members of the 
Board was possible, since the report of the committee at this time 
existed only in the form of a typewritten copy filed with the Secretary 
of the Board, and was not before the members of the Board in any 
shape or form. It is worthy of note, moreover, that the estimate was 
adopted by the Board in spite of, and without heed to the protest of a 
single member that it was unjust to call upon him to vote upon so 
important a matter when he had absolutely no information upon which 
to act. 

The perfunctory adoption of important budget estimates even when 
the estimate is before the Board in printed form is, however, by no 
means unusual. The corporate stock estimates for the years 1911-1912 
and 1912-1913 were adopted- without any discussion whatever, and 
the regular departmental estimates for the same years were in no case 
discussed with reference to more than a few items. ^ 

An examination of the table presented, and of the instances cited, 
W'hen taken in conjunction with the facts presented in the preceding 
section regarding the inadecjuate nature of the reports presented to the 
Board, seems to us fully to warrant the statement that even upon mat- 
ters of high legislative and financial importance, matters the proper dis- 
position of which, after their full consideration by many minds, would 
seem to constitute the chief justification for the Board's existence, are, 
not only occasionally but as a matter of regular practice, passed upon 
by the members of the Board without any adequate consideration. 

SUMMARY 

The conclusions reached in the preceding chapter on general con- 
siderations, regarding the wisdom of the Board's exercise of adminis- 
trative as well as legislative powers, receive emphatic support from a 
study of the actual conduct of the meetings of the Board. 

^Minutes, p. 422 ff. 'Minutes. 1911, p. 489; 1912, p. 939 f. 
'Minutes, 1910, pp. 1505-6; 1911, p. 140S ; 1912, p. 1719. 



l6o EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

1. It is found that, in spite, or rather because, of the great mass of 
administrative business which it transacts, the Board fails completely 
to exert any real control over the ordinary administration of the 
department, or to exercise that unifying and interesting influence by 
which alone its intervention in administrative matters could in any 
case be justified. 

2. At the same time, and very largely as a result of its attempted 
administrative activity, its legislative business is for the most part 
transacted without any serious attempt at deliberation or discussion. 

3. The time consumed by the Board in its administrative business 
could be somewhat reduced, and the time available for its legislative 
and inspectorial activity correspondingly increased by the use of better 
mechanical methods of presenting information to the Board for action 
and by the adoption of by-laws designed to give precedence, in the 
order of consideration, to legislative and inspectorial business. 

4. No very material improvement can be expected, however, from 
such measures. Only by the complete or almost complete divestment of 
administrative functions can the Board obtain the time, and retain the 
interest and the habits of mind which are essential to a proper consid- 
eration of its legislative and inspectorial business. 



CHAPTER III. THE COMMITTEE SYSTEM 

Section i. Organization. 

Section 2. Powers and Functions of the Several Committees. 
Section 3. Efficiency of Committee System. 
Summary. 

The importance of the part played in the administration of the 
Department of Education by the committees of the Board of Education 
is perhaps not generally appreciated. Even the evidence presented in 
the foregoing chapter, that the action of the Board even in matters 
of considerable weight is not infrequently confined to a more or less 
perfunctory approval of the action of its committees, fails to indi- 
cate the full significance of the role played by the committees. For, 
almost without exception, the committees are authorized by the by- 
laws to exercise functions and take actions which are never made 
the subject of report to the Board and which do not appear in the 
journal of that body. Most of the committees furthermore exercise 
extensive powers not specifically mentioned in the by-laws. In short, 
the statement may be made that a committee of the Board intervenes 
at some points in the performance of virtually every act of importance 
in the administration of the department and in many acts of no im- 
portance. Preparatory to any understanding of this intervention some 
account of the organization of these committees should be given. 



Section 1. Organization 

The organization of the committees of the Board of Education is 
determined by the Charter only to the extent of the provision for an 
executive committee of fifteen members which the Board is recjuired 
(by Section 1063) to appoint annually in the month of July. All other 
committees of the Board are provided for by its own by-laws. 

The history and present status, or rather, lack of status, of the 
Executive Committee have already been fully discussed.^ 

The by-laws make provision for fourteen standing committees in 
addition to the Executive Committee. Of these committees two only, 
that on by-laws and legislation and that on finance, exercise func- 
tions touching upon all parts of the educational system. Of the remain- 
ing twelve, four have each of them supervision over a particular branch 

' See pp. 129, supra. 
161 



l62 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

of the business organization, and seven others over particular branches 
of the educational organization (with an eighth, that on course of 
study and text-books, exercising a slight degree of control over the 
matters covered by its name in all the schools). On the educational 
side there are committees for elementary schools, high and training 
schools, special schools, nautical school, vocational schools and indus- 
trial training, lectures and libraries, and athletics. On the business side 
there exist a committee on supplies, one on buildings, one on sites and 
one on care of buildings. 

A comparison of this scheme of committee organization with the 
scheme of educational and business organization prevailing among the 
paid officers of the department (which, in turn, as pointed out in a pre- 
ceding chapter, is largely determined by the Charter itself), reveals 
clearly that the committee organization of the Board has been developed 
with the object of placing over each chief educational or administrative 
officer a separate committee. Though the form of organization of the 
Board of Superintendents and of the City Superintendent's office tends 
somewhat to obscure the fact, there exist in those offices what are vir- 
tually separate bureaus, one charged with supervision over high schools, 
another over vocational schools, still another over special schools ; while 
lectures, libraries and athletics have each of them a specially appointed 
director or supervisor. Each of the chief business officers of the Board 
also, except the secretary, that is, the auditor, the superintendent of 
school buildings, the superintendent of school supplies and the super- 
visor of janitors — has a separate committee exercising supervision over 
him. 

There is, of course, no complete separation between the functions 
of the educational and business officers. Their work comes into con- 
tact at many points, and therefore each committee in charge of an edu- 
cational activity must from time to time have relations with the busi- 
ness officers and vice versa, but on the whole, the statement is war- 
ranted that each particular committee is to all intents and purposes a 
supervisor of a particular branch of the educational or business organi- 
zation, and conversely that there is no branch of the educational or 
business organization which is not provided with a committee of the 
Board to supervise its conduct.^ 

1 One important exception to this last statement should, however, be noted. There 
appears to be no provision for a committee which shall have supervision over the 
methods employed and the work performed by the Board of Examiners. To a certain 
extent of course the operations of that body come under the cognizance of the several 
school committees. The Committee on High Schools, for example, can doubtless properly 
take cognizance of the methods used by the Board of Examiners in the determina- 
tion of fitness of candidates for positions in the high schools, even though no mention 
of that matter is specifically made in the section of the By-Laws defining the powers 
of that committee ; and the Committee on By-Laws is sometimes called upon to render 
an opinion as to the propriety of a decision of the Board of Examiners on a point of 
by-law or statutory construction. Such cognizance or supervision must, however, 
necessarily be intermittent and confined to exceptional cases. The daily conduct of 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 163 

Of the fourteen standing committees (not counting the Executive 
Committee) four have a membership of nine, and the remaining ten 
a membership of seven each, making, therefore, a total of one hundred 
and six committee memberships to be filled from the forty-five mem- 
bers of the Board (the President being ex-officio a member of all com- 
mittees). This committee organization thus affords opportunity to one 
out of three members of the Board to hold a committee chairmanship, 
and for every member to hold membership in at least two committees. 

The major business committees of the Board, those on Buildings, 
Care of Buildings and Supplies, as well as that on By-Laws and Legis- 
lation, meet regularly every week, those on Finance, Elementary and 
Special Schools every fortnight, those on High and Vocational Schools 
every month and the remaining committees (Sites, Studies and Text- 
Books. Lectures and Libraries, Nautical School and Athletics) only at 
the call of the chairman, holding no meetings, sometimes, for three or 
four months at a time. Business is prepared for the action of the 
committee by the clerk of the committee, who also, in the committees 
where business is heavy, compiles a calendar of the business to be trans- 
acted and furnishes each member of the committee with a copy thereof 
at the opening of the meeting. 

The City Superintendent assigns to each committee an Associate 
City Superintendent to represent the Board of Superintendents before 
the committee. The regularity of attendance of this representative, 
and the importance of the part played by him, varies with the nature 
of the functions of the committee. In few cases, however, does he 
appear to function very significantly in the work of the committee. 

The attendance of members of the committee themselves appears 
to be as regular as can reasonably be expected. An investigation cov- 
ering the meetings of all the committees for the four months, January 
to April, 191 1, disclosed absences to the extent of 26.6 per cent, of the 
possible maximum attendance. Of the ninety-six committeee member- 
ships then existing, the holders of twenty-nine memberships (number- 
ing, however, only twenty individuals) had been absent from more 
than one-third of the total number of meetings held by their committees 
during the period mentioned. Those members who are frequently 
absent are not, however, commonly entrusted w^ith much business, so 
that the rather large proportion of absences indicated does not interfere 
with the business of the committee as seriously as might be thought. 
The by-laws, it should moreover be noted, fix the quorum of all stand- 
ing committees at three, irrespective of the size of the committee. 

business by the Board of Examiners, and the determinations made by that Board in 
the regular course of business do not, as with all the other administrative officers of 
the Board, automatically come up for review before any committee of the Board, even 
though such determinations would seem in most cases to involve a larger degree of 
discretion, and even perhaps of legislative consideration, than the determinations made 
by any other of the administrative officers. 



l64 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

Section 2. Powers and functions of the several committees 

a. Legislative. 

b. Inspectorial. 

c. Administrative. 

Each of the business and educational committees is entrusted by the 
by-laws with general charge of the bureau or schools under its juris- 
diction. In some matters it is given specific authority to take final 
action; and the by-laws provide that "the action of any Standing Com- 
mittee shall be final, unless disapproved or modified by the Board" 
upon all matters except those "regarding which a report is required by 
by-law, resolution or practise of the Board, or upon any matter specially 
referred to it by the Board." The general effect of this by-law, as 
well as those governing the individual committees is, especially in con- 
nection with the committees in charge of business divisions, to permit 
of great expansion or contraction of the supervisory activity of a com- 
mittee according to the inclination of its members to assume, and of 
the official concerned to divest himself, of the responsibility for final 
action. An examination of the minutes of each committee is conse- 
quently necessary for the determination of the extent of the powers 
actually exercised by that committee. 

In discussing those functions it has been deemed advisable to follow 
the classification of functions as legislative, inspectorial and adminis- 
trative which was adopted in discussing the functions of the Board 
itself. 

a. Legislative functions 

1. Enactment of general regulations. 

2. Control over content of instruction. 

3. Control over budget estimates. 

1. Enactment of general regulations 

The general regulations governing the conduct of the department 
are found either in the statutes, in the by-laws of the Board or in 
regulations governing particular branches of the department promul- 
gated by the several committees in charge of them. 

Proposals for modification of the by-laws usually originate with one 
or another of the committees vested with supervision over a special 
branch of the business or educational organization and are then referred 
by the Board to its Committee on By-Laws and Legislation. 

The function of this committee in such cases seems to be chiefly to 
frame the proposed modification in proper form consistently with the 
rest of the by-laws, without considering in more than a very cursory 
way the advisability of the change proposed. Certain important modi- 
fications of the by-laws, however, as those affecting committee organi- 



i 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 165 

zation, the methods of doing business, and the general regulations 
affecting the conduct of all the schools, frequently originate with the 
Committee on By-Laws and Legislation itself, and in their formulation 
and presentation the committee doubtless exercises an important influ- 
ence upon the Board's activities. 

The Committee on By-Laws and Legislation is also the agent of 
the Board with reference to proposed or pending legislation, state and 
municipal. Educational legislation desired by the Board is framed by 
or at the direction of this committee. The Committee furthermore 
subscribes to a service at Albany which forwards to it (as well as to 
each member of the Board) copies of all bills introduced into the Legis- 
lature regarding educational matters. Each of these bills is carefully 
considered by the Committee and a report adopted for presentation to 
the Board committing the Board either to opposition to, or to support 
of, the proposed measure, and authorizing the Committee on By-Laws 
to take such stej^s as may be necessary to secure its defeat or passage.-^ 

In formulating its opinion as to the advisability of the passage of 
proposed legislation, the Committee occasionally gives audience to dele- 
gations Representing interested organizations. It does not, however, 
hold public hearings, even on measures of the highest importance, such 
as the group of bills known as the McKee bills, favorable action on 
which was recently taken by the Board. It is worthy of consideration 
whether a more representative expression of public opinion on the 
more important of the measures considered would not be obtained by 
the Committee through the medium of public hearings. 

2. Control over content of instruction 

The activity of the Board of Education in determining the content 
of the instruction given in the schools has in the past been severely 
limited by the provisions of the charter which vest all power of initia- 
tive in this matter in the Board of Superintendents. The activity of 
the several committees of the Board entrusted with consideration of 
matters in this class has naturally, therefore, been similarly limited. 

Recommendations of the Board of Superintendents with reference 
to changes in the course of study are usually referred by the Board 
first to the committee having supervision over the particular class of 
schools concerned. That committee in turn, after taking action upon 
them, transmits them to the Committee on Studies and Text-Books. 

The function of lay committees in this class of matters must neces- 

1 It has been pointed out in the preceding section of this report that in spite of 
the importance of these reports, their acceptance is in almost all cases as perfunctory 
as is that of reports upon matters of the most trifling administrative detail ; and for 
this reason the present form of report in which the text of the bill is not given, and 
only the reasons supporting the Committee's recommendation (those, too, in very brief 
form) are presented, is doubtless justified; even though, if the Board were to take 
more deliberative action, the reports in question should, it would seem, contain not 
only full text of the bill, but a full statement of the reasons for and against its passage, 
irrespective of the Committee's recommendations. 



1 66 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

sarily be confined to changes of a fundamental character. Within 
recent years few such changes have been recommended by the Board of 
Superintendents and it is therefore difficult to estimate the value of 
the contributions made by the committees. Examination of the min- 
utes of the Committee on Studies and Text-Books for 191 1 and the 
first three months of 1912 disclosed no matter of real importance that 
came before the Committee. Since that time the Committee has had 
under consideration a recommendation of the Board of Superinten- 
dents relating to a far-reaching change in the course of study for ele- 
mentary schools; and, we believe, has given the matter careful and 
thorough consideration, having, furthermore, held public hearings upon 
it; but exact information upon the activities of the committee in this 
matter is not yet available.^ 

The propriety of the full consideration by committees of the Board 
(as indeed by the Board as a whole) of proposed changes in the course 
of study is not open to question ; and we believe that, within the limited 
sphere of action in this regard hitherto open to the Board of Educa- 
tion, its committees have done their work well. It would seem, how- 
ever, that even under the theory of committee organization at present 
obtaining in the Board, time and trouble would be saved, and better co- 
ordination between the several school courses secured if all matters 
relating to courses of study were vested in a single large course of study 
committee (which might, of course, have sub-committees in elementary 
schools, high schools, etc.), in place of having the present double- 
headed arrangement. In view of the large additional power just con- 
ferred upon the Board of Education in this matter, we urge special con- 
sideration of the advisability of the change suggested. 

The Committee on Studies and Text-Books is charged with super- 
vision over the so-called "Supply List" which contains the names of 
all text-books, and the description df all supplies, which the Superin- 
tendent of School Supplies is authorized to furnish to the schools. 
Here, too, the committee can act only on the recommendation of the 
Board of Superintendents and, in almost all cases, its action is neces- 
sarily purely perfunctory. While the Board should have power to con- 
trol the character of text-books and supplies issued, such control would 
doubtless be adequately exercised if asserted only in rare and excep- 
tional instances when distinct affirmative or negative action might be 
called for by large considerations of policy. 

3. Control over budget estimates 

The preparation of the annual departmental estimates of the De- 
partment of Education must be. as with all other departments, chiefly 

1 At this writing (May i, 1913), the Minutes of the Committee on Studies and 
Text-Books are not availalDle for consultation at the office of the Secretary, for any 
meetings subsequent to March 25, 1912, the clerk to that committee having not yet 
transcribed his stenographic notes of those meetings. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 167 

a work of statistical compilation. It presents, however, two features 
which involve legislative consideration to a much greater degree than 
in most of the other city departments. These two elements are: First, 
the difficulty of predicting in advance the school population for the 
coming year, and second, the continued expansion and innovation of 
educational activities of various descriptions. Impossible as committee 
intervention obviously is in the work of statistical compilation, it would 
seem that in revising the judgment of the educational officers of the 
Board, both as to the probable necessary expansion of the school sys- 
tem through the increase of population, and as to the development or 
expansion of special educational activities such as recreation centres, 
public lectures, etc., the judgment of committees of laymen might be 
of high value. 

To determine the extent to which in the past the committees of 
the Board have actually exercised any control over, or attempted any 
revision of the judgments of the officers of the Board is next to im- 
possible. The only evidence available to us has been an examination 
of the action of the committee upon the recommended estimates sub- 
mitted by the several officers of the Board. Such an examination has 
been made with reference to the annual estimate for the year 19 12, 
without discovering any instance in which the action of the committee 
effected any radical or even significant change in the estimate submitted 
by the business or educational officer involved. 

The estimates thus prepared by the several committees are submit- 
ted to the Committee on Finance, which supervises the work of drawing 
up the estimate for presentation to the Board and to the fiscal authori- 
ties. The function of the Committee on Finance with respect to the 
preparation of the estimate is laid down in the by-laws, which declare ^ 
that the committee ''shall consider and submit to the Board of Educa- 
tion all recjuests whatsoever upon the financial officers of the city for 
funds for educational purposes including the annual departmental esti- 
mate required by law, and all such requests for funds must first be 
approved and recommended by the Committee on Finance." 

The intent of this provision of the by-laws would seem to be that 
the function of the Committee should not be merely clerical or perfunc- 
tory, but should be exercised in a real consideration of the propriety 
of the estimates submitted. Thus, the several officers of the Board, par- 
ticularly those in charge of special educational or semi-educational ac- 
tivities, might submit to the Committee on Finance, with the approval 
of the several committees entrusted with their supervision, estimates in- 
volving considerable expansion of those activities, requiring such 
large additional expenditures as to bring the total educational esti- 
mate up to a figure which, in view of the existing state of the mu- 
nicipal finances, it might plainly be seen would be considered by the 
financial authorities of the city as too high. The Committee on Fi- 

1 Section 15, subd. 2. 



t68 educational INVESTIGATION 

nance, it is apparently contemplated by the by-laws, would then be 
charged with the responsibility of carefully examining all the separate 
estimates submitted, with a view to eliminating those portions of them 
which called for expenditures which seemed relatively less necessary or 
justifiable — to perform, in short, for the Department of Education the 
same work of adjustment and apportionment as is performed for the 
city as a whole by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. 

While we are not prepared to say that the estimates submitted by 
the Department of Education for the years 1911, 1912 and 19 13 par- 
ticularly called for the exercise, by the Committee on Finance, of this 
function of readjustment, we do think that the action of the Committee 
(in so far as the character of that action may be deduced from a read- 
ing of the Committee's minutes), has hardly, if at all, been calculated 
even to reveal whether or not readjustment was called for. 

Conversation with the fiscal officers of the Board has further con- 
firmed the impression that the Committee on Finance does not, or at 
least in the past has not, conceived it to be its function to revise or 
amend in any way the estimates received by it from the several com- 
mittees having in charge the separate activities or channels of expendi- 
ture of the Board, except in such obvious cases as one that arose in the 
preparation of the 19 12 estimate, where estimates submitted by different 
officers of the Board in connection with the same kind of schools varied 
widely in the figures for the past year taken as a basis for the estimate. 

In the preceding section of this report, it was pointed out that the 
Board as a whole exercises virtually no revisory control over the budget 
estimate, approving it without any material change as presented by the 
Committee on Finance. Inasmuch, however, as that Committee itself, 
to all appearance at any rate, also fails completely to attempt any 
revisory action, the conclusion seems fully warranted that the budget 
estimates of the Board of Education when presented to the Board of 
Estimate and Apportionment have not yet passed through the hands of 
any single authority prepared to consider impartially the claims for 
recognition of the several distinct branches of educational or semi-edu- 
cational activity involved, but are really the estimates not of the 
Department of Education, but of the six or seven distinct committees 
of the Board which are charged zvith the supervision of one of those 
■activities. 

If the view presented of the function of the Committee on Finance 
as conceived by the by-laws is correct, there exists an occasion upon 
which the activity of the Committee on Finance is still more unmis- 
takably called for than in the preparation of the annual departmental 
estimate. 

Special revenue bonds, both from their nature and in the contem- 
plation of the Charter, should be issued only for emergency purposes, 
and not for any purpose which could reasonably have been foreseen at 
the time of the preparation of the annual estimate. It follows as of 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 169 

course, therefore, that the Committee on Finance should carefully 
scrutinize all requests referred to it from other committees to ascertain 
whether such emergency actually does exist. An examination of the 
committee minutes indicates rather conclusively, however, that even 
here it does not deem its function other than a perfunctory or formal 
one. The total absence of deliberative consideration previous to the 
passage by the Board of Education of the special revenue bond salary 
estimate of 191 1 /has been commented on in the preceding chapter of 
this part.^ We find, however, that even the Committee on Finance 
gave no consideration whatever to this most unusual estimate, merely 
directing the auditor to put the estimate in form suitable for presenta- 
tion to the fiscal authorities of the city. 

The methods used in the preparation of estimates for corporate 
stock required for the acquisition of sites and the construction of new 
buildings, have been described in some detail elsewhere in this report." 
Here it need only be pointed out that the Committee on Buildings, 
which now has charge of the preparation of requests for corporate 
stock, ^ is not provided with any definite administrative office to assist 
it in arriving at its decisions. The information upon which it acts comes 
from a variety of sources, chief among which are the Board of Super- 
intendents, the Local School Boards, the several school committees, 
and (though the Committee appears never to have made much use of 
this source), the Permanent Census Board. None of these authorities 
is, however, under the jurisdiction or supervision of the Committee to 
the slightest extent, and the Committee is therefore without any 
effective means of shaping or developing the methods pursued by these 
functionaries in securing the data or in arriving at the recommenda- 
tions presented. There is thus presented a most illuminating spectacle. 
While all the administrative committees of the Board, at least on the 
business side, are vested with and actually exercise complete control 
over the functionaries under their charge even in matters of the most 
insignificant detail, one of the most important of the legislative commit- 
tees of the Board (for in the formulation of the Board's policies of site 
acquisition and building construction the Committee on Buildings is 
doing legislative work of high importance) is seen to be powerless to 
secure the conditions fundamental to any reasonable exercise of its 
functions. 

On the basis of the facts just presented the statement seems justified 
that the control exercised by the Board through its committees over its 
requests for funds is imperfect; that the annual departmental Estimate 
does not receive, prior to its presentation to the Board of Estimate, any 
careful consideration at the hands of an impartial authority charged 

* See page 154, supra. " See Part I, Chapter IV. 

^The Committee on Sites has lost virtually all authority in this matter since the 
adoption in 191 1 by the Board of Estimate of the policy of requesting annual corporate 
stock estimates. 



170 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

with the responsibihty of viewing it in the interest of the entire educa- 
tional system, rather than of some special branch thereof ;• that the 
consideration of requests for special revenue bonds is similarly defec- 
tive ; and that no adequate control has been exerted over the methods 
used in the collection and analysis of the data used as the basis of re- 
quests for corporate stock. 

It is thus seen that in several of its most important aspects the legis- 
lative work entrusted to the committees has been performed by them 
neither with thoroughness nor efficiency. 

Even did all the committees, however, exercise with the utmost care 
and deliberation the legislative powers vested in them, not a few of them 
would still find relatively little with which to occupy their time; since 
the Board has provided for fourteen committees the amount of legisla- 
tive business which can come before any one of them is necessarily very 
limited. Unless therefore a committee is content with merely intermit- 
tent or sporadic activity it must find business with which to occupy 
itself in fields other than legislative. 

b. Inspectorial functions 

The conditions which were, in a preceding chapter, considered to 
limit the efficiency of the Board of Education in its work of investiga- 
tion and appraisal, apply with almost equal force to its several school 
committees. In the first place, no committee has a right of its own 
motion to conduct an investigation (except perhaps into some minor 
matter of routine specifically entrusted to it by the by-laws), but must 
secure authorization from the Board. In the second place, in endeavor- 
ing to appraise the work being done in the schools under its jurisdic- 
tion, the committee lacks the assistance of competent, i. e., professional 
and yet impartial observers. Its members must rely for their informa- 
tion either upon personal observation, necessarily so limited as to be 
almost worthless, or upon the reports of educational officers of the 
Board whose work is itself, to a very large extent, the subject of 
appraisal. 

hs above pointed out, the legislative work which falls to the lot of 
any single committee is necessarily very limited in amount. The 
inspectorial work of the school committees, however, largely, doubtless, 
as a result of the limitations just discussed, has also been almost negli- 
gible in quantity. As a result, the committees have sought other 
branches of work upon which to exercise their activity. They have 
found such work, it would seem from the succeeding section, in the 
performance of petty administrative routine. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION lyi 

c. Administrative functions 

1. Control over personnel. 

2. Control over administration. 

1. Control over Personnel 

a. Non-educational employees. 

I. Appointment. — In a foregoing section of this report it was pointed 
out that the Board of Education acts in full meeting upon the appoint- 
ment of every non-educational employee of the Board, from highest to 
lowest; and in view of the fact that such appointment is in the case of 
all but the chief officers of the Board and their deputies made from elig- 
ible lists prepared by the Municipal Civil Service Commission (leaving 
to the Board the option only of selecting one of three names certified), 
it was urged that the action of the full Board is unnecessary, and should 
therefore, be abandoned in favor of action merely by an appropriate 
committee or executive officer. In view of the totally perfunctory 
character of the Board's action in these matters, however, it may be 
said that appointments are now made by the several committees — 
being made by the Buildings, Finance and Care of Buildings and Spe- 
cial Schools ^ committees for the services under their several jurisdic- 
tions,- and by the Committee on Supplies for all other non-educational 
employees of the Board. ^ 

While the power of appointment is thus vested in the committees, 
it is in almost all cases actually exercised by the bureau chief concerned. 
The Committee on Care of Buildings appears to be the only one of the 
committees mentioned which makes a practice of summoning for 
inspection by the committee one or more of the eligibles certified by 
the Municipal Civil Service Commission. The other committees leave 
such inspection, if had at all. to the bureau chief, and ahnost invariably 
accept his recommendation. 

Whatever the practice, however, no good reason is apparent why 
the exercise of the slight discretion in appointing employees permitted 
by the civil service regulations may not in this department, as in all 
other city departments, be vested fully in the several bureau chiefs con- 
cerned. The intervention of commissioners, unfamiliar with the exact 
nature of the work required of the particular candidate for appoint- 
ment, and incapacitated through lack of time from making a thorough- 

1 The non-educational employees of the Truant, Parental and Disciplinary schools 
and all attendance officers (who, however, are nominated by the City Superintendent) 
are appointed on recommendation of the Committee on Special Schools. 

2 Subject, however, in the case of all office employees of those bureaus to the ap- 
proval of the Committee on Supplies — an approval apparently wholly perfunctory. 

3 Including all employees of the Bureau of Supplies, and in the offices of the 
Secretary, City Superintendent (including the offices of Associate Superintendents, 
Examiners, Directors of Special Branches and District Superintendents) and Super- 
visor of Lectures. 



172 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

going examination of his qualifications, can, we submit, have little, if 
any, effect for good. On the other hand, it may very conceivably 
encourage in the conduct of the department "wire pulling" and other 
forms of pernicious activity. 

It may perhaps be urged that in the selection of janitors, inasmuch 
as the fitness of the candidate for the position is determined no less by 
his personal reliability and general workmanlikeness of manner than by 
his technical knowledge, the judgment of the Committee on Care of 
Buildings may properly be invoked as auxiliary to the technical judg- 
ment of the Supervisor of Janitors.^ Even if this be admitted, how- 
ever, there seems no justification for any committee intervention with 
reference to the other non-educational employees of the department. 

2. Salaries.^Tht same considerations apply even with more force 
perhaps to the methods of fixing and of increasing the salaries of such 
employees. Here, too, the committees have virtually the final decision. 
If, however, the contention above made that intervention by committees 
of the Board in appointments is without justification, still more unjusti- 
fiable would seem to be that intervention in the matter of salary in- 
creases. The only employees of the Board with whose work the 
members of the Board have any opportunity of becoming familiar are 
the clerks of the several committees. With respect to all other em- 
ployees of the Board, the committee of the particular bureau is com- 
pelled to take the word of the bureau chief. 

Most strikingly is this the case with the Committee on Supplies, 
which is vested with full power over the salary increases of almost a 
hundred employees with whom it has no other connection whatever. 
Here again then the investment of the committees with power would 
seem to serve no good purpose, and may, in fact, in case a committee 
should choose, as it may, to recommend to the Board an increase of 
which the bureau chief has refused to approve, become an influence in- 
imical to the preservation of discipline, good order and subordination. 

3. Removal and Discipline. — The power of removing employees of 
the Board is by the Charter ^ specifically vested in the Board, to be exer- 
cised by it only by a vote of three-quarters of its members. The con- 
sideration by the Board, either in full session or by committee, of 
charges of neglect of duty, etc., preferred against the employees of the 
Board by their bureau chiefs is therefore virtually made mandatory by 
the Charter, though upon general considerations there would seem no 
good reason why so elaborate a protection of the employee against 
unjust removal should be any more necessary in the Department of 
Education than in any other city department. 

The function is also exercised by the several business committees 
of imposing disciplinary punishments less serious than removal, upon 
the employees under their jurisdiction. The Committees on Care of 

^ It is pertinent to note that under present practice the opinion of the Supervisor 
of Janitors is not called for, ^ Sec. 1067. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 173. 

Buildings and on Buildings are specifically empowered by the by-laws 
to hear answers to charges, and to impose limited fines ^ upon the 
employees coming under their several bureaus, though no reason is 
apparent for the investment of these committees with the power men- 
tioned any more than the Supplies or Finance Committees. The pro- 
priety of the exercise of disciplinary powers by these committees is 
doubtless a question upon which there is ample room for difference in 
opinion; and any answer must necessarily be a compromise between 
considerations of administrative efficiency and complete protection of 
the rights of the individual employee. Any considerations, however, 
which may be advanced to justify the failure to provide the bureau 
chief with disciplinary powers can be valid, it is believed, only with 
reference to very grave breaches of order involving a correspondingly 
heavy penalty. Under the present practice, however, even breaches of 
minor character frequently receive the attention of a committee.^ 

Finally, in relation to the control of committees over the adminis- 
trative personnel, it may be mentioned that excuses of absence with pay, 
leaves of absence with or without pay and arrangements for the annual 
vacations of employees all come before the several committees for 
action. While this class of matters is of slight importance, it is doubt- 
less true of it, as of the other matters discussed, that where the com- 
mittee accepts the recommendation of the bureau chief (as it almost 
invariably does) its action is superfluous; and that where it rejects it, 
its action is probably unwarranted. 

In general, then, it may be said that as compared with similar offi- 
cials in other departments, the bureau chiefs of the Department of Edu- 
cation are severely limited in their powers of discipline (through either 
reward or punishment) over their subordinates, and to some extent, 
are limited even in their powers of selection, because of the interven- 
tion of committees of the Board. To us the statement seems clearly 
warranted that such committee interference is without justification in 
any principles of administrative or business efficiency. At any rate it 
must be admitted that if the methods here described are based upon 

1 In case of janitors not more than five days' pay; in case of employees in the 
Bureau of Buildings not more than a week's pay. 

" The Committee on Care of Buildings particularly, appears to take cognizance of 
extremely trivial derelictions of duty on the part of janitors. The function of the Su- 
pervisor of Janitors (for whose supervisory functions, it may be here rernarked, one 
may search in vain the By-Laws of the Board) seems to be chiefly the registration of 
complaints against janitors received by him through his inspectors and from other 
sources, and the presentation of them "to the Committee on Care of Buildings for ac- 
tion. Even the most trifling matters, such as the failure of a janitor to display the 
national colors on the roof of the school on a particular day, are referred by the Super- 
visor to the Committee. No argument is necessary to prove, we believe, that a greater 
sense of responsibility, as well as a greater promptness in administration, and in the 
correction of minor abuses, would result from the investment of the Supervisor of 
Janitors with definite supervisory, and perhaps even minor disciplinary power, leaving 
for the consideration of the committee only delinquencies of a serious character. For 
an instance of the delay and inefficiency ensuing from this system of discipline by- 
committee, see p. 186 infra. 



174 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

sound considerations of policy, the methods obtaining in all the other 
city departments for performing exactly the same kind of business 
must be radically wrong. We fail to perceive any relevant distinction 
between a draughtsman in the Department of Education and a 
draughtsman in the Department of Bridges. 

(b) Educational Employees 

As in the business services of the Board, appointments to all posi- 
tions in the educational service pass through the hands of the appro- 
priate educational committee (except that of lecturers, whose selection 
is by the Charter vested in the Supervisor of Lectures). The action of 
these committees appears to us to have even less justification than that 
of the business committees inasmuch as with reference to the educa- 
tional positions the committees have not even the option of selecting 
one of the three highest candidates on the eligible list since the right of 
selection is vested in the Board of Superintendents. The only action 
that a committee can possibly take is therefore the rejection of a nom- 
ination made by the Board of Superintendents. The committee cannot 
possibly, however, with reference to the great bulk of appointees, inter- 
view or otherwise examine into the litness of the nominees, even if 
there should be any good reason for its doing so. There exist, there- 
fore, only two cases in which the nomination made by the Board of 
Superintendents can with any show of reason be justified, namely, if 
the Board of Superintendents has passed over the names of the two 
highest on an eligible list for a reason which seems to the committee 
unwarranted (an action which as a matter of practice is never taken 
by the Board of Superintendents, which passes a name only at the wish, 
expressed or assumed, of the eligible), or if the nomination has been 
made without the previous preparation of an eligible list, a procedure 
which is followed only in the case of nomination of district superinten- 
dents, directors of special branches and principals of high schools. It 
would seem, then, that every useful purpose would be served if the 
Board of Superintendents submitted its nominations directly to the 
Board except in the two classes of cases mentioned. 

The submission to the committee of promotions, (also made from 
eligible lists) and of transfers from one district to another seems to 
us equally useless; as is also we think the action taken by those com- 
mittees on the retirement of superannuated teachers. 

The committees are also called not infrequently to pass upon appli- 
cations made by teachers for excuse of absence with pay, or for leave 
of absence with or without pay in cases not covered by the By-Laws. 
While some of these cases involve legislative considerations and are 
therefore proper subjects for consideration by the committee and by 
the Board, examination shows that far the larger part of them (and 
thev numbered ninety in 191 1), fall into a very few classes to meet 
which additional by-laws could readily be drafted under which the 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 



175 



Board of Superintendents would be employed to deal tinally with these 
cases. 

The only function of real importance which the educational com- 
mittees exercise with reference to the personnel of the educational 
employees of the Board is that of conducting trials of charges preferred 
against such employees (in accordance with Section 1093 of the Char- 
ter) by a local school_ board or a member thereof, the City Superinten- 
dent or an associate or a district superintendent "for gross misconduct, 
insubordination, neglect of duty or general inefficiency." In trying 
these charges all testimony must be taken under oath, and the com- 
mittee is authorized by the Charter to invoke the assistance of the 
Supreme Court to compel the attendance of witnesses if necessary. 

In the exercise of this function the committees without doubt act 
with great deliberation and impartiality, and this function is an effec- 
tive check against any possible attempt on the part of the supervisory 
officers of the Board to rid themselves of a member of the teaching 
staff obnoxious to them for reasons not connected with the good of the 
service by the preferment of unwarranted charges. Whether the pos- 
sibility of such an attempt is sufficiently real to compensate for the im- 
pairment of effective supervisory control which the necessity for the 
preferment of formal charges before what is virtually a judicial body 
must necessarily induce, is a difficult question, and one to which no cate- 
gorical answer can be given. ~ As at present exercised, however, this 
power is M'ithout question one of those least open to criticism of all 
the functions now performed by the committees.^ 

2. Control over Administration 

The control exercised b}^ each of the committees over the conduct 
of business in the branch of business or educational administration un- 
der its charge springs partly from by-law provisions conferring author- 
ity upon the committee in particular matters and partly from the prac- 
tice developed by the committee under the general power of supervision 
conferred upon it by the by-laws. A review in some detail of the func- 
tions exercised by the several committees under both these specific and 
general grants of authority is essential to a proper estimate of the wis- 
dom of their investment and the efficiency of their exercise. 

1 The Committee on Elementary Schools, the most important of the School Com- ' 
mittees, has recently been endeavoring to put a stop to the practice, which had been 
alleo;ed to be prevalent among the teachers of the elementary schools, of remaining 
on the pay-rolls unwarrantably when not in service for the purpose of securing pay- 
ment for Saturdays, Sundays, holidays and vacations. The committee has summoned 
to appear at each meeting a number of teachers who have been absent for long periods. 
A reading of the minutes of the Committee covering the meetings in question conveys 
the impression, however, that the Committee's action is considerably less eiTective than 
would be the action of one of the higiier supervisory officers of the Board. 

The Committee on Elementary Schools appears to function also, though to a very 
limited extent, as an agency for the collection of debts owed by members of the teach- 
ing force to tradesmen, landlords, etc. 



176 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

(a) Business administration 

I. Committee on Buildings. — The intervention of the Committee 
on Buildings is required at every important administrative step in the 
construction and equipment of a school building.^ To begin with, it is 
now this committee which reviews the recommendations made by the 
Board of Superintendents or the City Superintendent as to the need 
of new buildings and, upon the basis of these recommendations, de- 
cides, subject to the approval of the Board, in what localities new build- 
ings shall be constructed when funds become available.^ 

When funds for several buildings become available at the same 
time, it decides which of them shall first be constructed. It approves, 
subject to the final approval of the Board, the plans prepared by the 
Superintendent of School Buildings, authorizes him to advertise for 
bids, awards the contract to the lowest bidder or rejects all bids (in 
both cases subject to the purely perfunctory ratification of the Board). 
In the handling of the tremendous amount of repair work continually 
being done in the schools, the Committee is empowered to authorize 
expenditures of sums less than $1,000 without reference to the Board, 
and, should it deem necessary, without advertising for bids (merely 
endeavoring to obtain five bids). The Superintendent himself may 
authorize the expenditure of sums less than $500 without reference to 
the Committee, and without advertisement. In either case, if less than 
the full number of bids (five for amounts greater than, three for 
amounts less than, $200) is received, through failure or neglect of con- 
tractors to submit bids, the Superintendent may, if he deems an emer- 
gency to exist, issue the order nevertheless, but must later secure the 
approval of the Committee. 

After a contract has been made, the intervention of the Committee 
is called for in the extension of time to the contractor, or for the per- 
formance of additional work by him or in imposing penalties upon him. 

In addition to these functions in connection with the award of con- 
tracts and issuance of orders, the Committee is empowered to promul- 
gate regulations with reference to buildings and repairs, to divide the 
cit)^ into districts and assign inspectors to them, and "to direct the 
storage and disposition of unused property." 

With respect to the preparation and execution of the large number 
of leases of premises for school purposes, moreover, the Committee is 
required by the by-laws to "obtain from the appropriate authorities cer- 
tificates that the premises proposed to be leased for school purposes are 
in a satisfactory condition as to safety and sanitation." 

^ By-Laws, Sec. 16. 

" On the whole, this decision with respect to elementary schools at least would 
seem to rest much more properly with the Committee on Elementary Schools, whose 
work brings it constantly into contact with the facts of congestion, part-time and 
school organization throughout the city. Tlie primary function of the Committee on 
Buildings is to administer the actual construction of buildings ; for the work of decid- 
ing where buildings should be constructed it has no special experience or information. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 



177 



The functions of the Committee on Buildings are thus indeed multi- 
tudinous, and the amount of detail coming before it is correspondingly- 
great, and, with the rapid growth of the school system and of the city, 
increasingly so. Analysis of the functions here outlined, and examina- 
tion of the Committee's minutes/ however, fails to reveal that in its 
performance of these arduous duties, the Committee is performing any 
very useful function. The mass of business placed upon it with refer- 
ence to the award of contracts is purely perfunctory in character, 
the methods of procedure being made virtually mandatory by the 
charter provisions. 

With reference to other matters coming before it, such as the 
authorization of repairs, action by the Committee is a palpable ab- 
surdity. The Committee is absolutely incapacitated from exact or tech- 
nical information as to the necessity or urgency of the several matters 
brought to its attention, and has no alternative but to accept the recom- 
mendations of the Superintendent of School Buildings or his deputies. 
We fail to see any good purpose that is served by committee action in 
these matters, while the waste of valuable time of the Superintendent 
and his subordinates in presenting matters to the Committee, as well as 
of a not inconsiderable sum of money expended in preparing the min- 
utes of the Committee, requires no pointing out. 

The only function exercised by the Committee for which we are 
able to see any basis in reason is its supervision over the adjustments 
made with contractors relative to the allowance of time and deductions 
and fines for failure to comply with the specifications, etc. Even here, 
however, the work of the Superintendent of School Buildings differs 
only in quantity, and not in the least in kind, from that performed by 
the rather irresponsible private architects in charge of building opera- 
tions for the other departments; and we cjuestion very much whether 
the magnitude of the operations conducted by the Education Depart- 
ment justifies in any degree the duplication, not to say the multiplica- 
tion, of work involved. Doubtless the expenditure by a single officer 
of so large a sum of money as that annually disbursed under the direc- 
tion of the Superintendent of School Buildings should be safeguarded 
in some way; but we fail to see how the present routine activities of 
the Committee on Buildings are in the least calculated to afford such 
safeguard. 

2. The Committee on Finance is authorized (By-Laws. Section 15, 
subd. 4 and 6) to "administer the public school teachers' retirement 
fund," and to "apportion to the high schools and elementary schools 
the money appropriated by the State from the common school library 
fund and from the academic fund" upon a specified basis. Beyond 
this, the committee seems to exercise very little supervision over the 

1 Two hundred copies of these are prmted. They make annually a volume of 
about 1,000 pages. 



178 ' EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

auditor. Doubtless, the routine character of the business conducted in 
the Bureau of Audit furnishes httle occasion for such supervision. 

3. The Committee on Supplies is vested by the by-laws (in addition 
to its control over the personnel of the administrative staff of the 
Board above treated), with no specific powers, the by-laws simply 
stating (Section 17, subd. i) that it "shall have charge of all matters 
relating to the purchase of all books, apparatus, stationery, fuel, and 
other supplies and the transportation of pupils." Under this general 
authority, however, the Committee, as is apparent from even a cursory 
examination of its minutes, takes an active part in the administration 
of the bureau under its charge. All bills rendered by officers or em- 
ployees of the Board for necessary expenses, such as, for example, 
automobile hire, must come before it for approval; requests of princi- 
pals for certain classes of major supplies such as typewriting machines, 
mimeographs, pictures, etc., and recjuests for the installation of tele- 
phones, also recjuire its action; and even requests for copies of the min- 
utes of the Board of Education or for the book of maps of local school 
board districts published by the Board must be submitted to it,^ even 
when they come from officers of the Board or of other city departments. 
Its intervention is required in many ordinary transactions between the 
Bureau of Supplies and the various contractors supplying it with mer- 
chandise, an important class of which is the negotiation of rebates by 
the contractors because the goods furnished did not come up to specifi- 
cations. It acts also on the numerous requests received from parochial 
and other private schools for the loan of discarded books or other sup- 
plies. It approves of assignments of payments due on contracts for 
furnishing supplies • and in general intervenes at many points in the 
administration of the bureau, which it is incredible that the Superinten- 
dent of School Supplies, an official receiving a salary of $7,000 per 
annum, should not he fully competent to dispose of finally. 

4. The Committee on Care of Buildings is charged by the by-laws 
with the discretion of granting "permission for the use of school build- 
ings or property" "for a public exhibition or entertainment" unless an 
admission fee is to be charged or a collection taken, in which case the 
Board itself must grant authority. It is also authorized to "make rules 
and regulations to secure the proper performance of the duties of the 
Supervisor of Janitors" and "of janitors and other employees required 
for the care of buildings." and "for the cleaning and disinfecting of 
school buildings and other property belonging to the Board" ; also to 
prepare all schedules for the salaries of janitors. The functions of 
this committee beyond those just mentioned are almost wholly confined 
to the supervision of the personnel of the janitorial service. Such 

' It may be noted here that certain other publications of the Board, as, for ex- 
ample, the directory of teachers, are issued from the office of the Secretary or of the 
City Superintendent in the discretion of almost any clerl< to whom the request happens 
to he addressed. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 



179 



other matters of detail as do arise in connection with the conduct of 
buildings are also acted upon by the Committee, however, no matter 
seemingly being too trifling to merit its attention. A cursory examina- 
tion of its minutes during the first half of the year 19 12 reveals that it 
takes cognizance even of such a matter as a request from the principal 
of an evening high school that she be permitted to open the door of one 
side of the school building rather than that on the other, or of a slight 
change in the apportionment of office space on one of the floors of the 
hall of the Board or of a request from the principal of a high school 
for the grant of permission to one of his pupils to keep a motorcycle 
in the building. 

With reference furthermore, to the power specifically conferred 
upon it by the by-laws to grant permission for the use of school build- 
ings, it may be noted that it passes upon requests not only of an excep- 
tional character, such as requests from civic or political organizations, 
but even from principals for uses which would seem to be in the very 
nature of school business, such as the conduct of graduation exercises 
or of meetings of organizations of pupils of the schools for customary 
purposes. As a matter of practice such requests are almost all passed 
upon by the chairman of the committee. 

5. TJic Conuuittcc on Sites differs from all the other business com- 
mittees of the Board in that it does not supervise the work of paid 
employees, but itself does all the work under its jurisdiction. Its func- 
tion is now to locate and select sites for school buildings after the neces- 
sity for the acquisition of a site in a particular locality has been deter- 
mined on by the Board and the funds therefor obtained.^ 

\Mien the necessity for the selection of a site in a particular locality 
arises the Committee usually refers the matter to the member or mem- 
bers of the Committee from the borough in which that locality is situ- 
ated (the Committee being constituted with a view to having at least 
one member from each borough). That member or members make a 
personal examination of the locality and select one or more sites which 
they deem suitable. These are reported to the Committee which refers 
them to the real estate appraiser of the Finance Department for report as 
to their purchaseability and their value. Acting upon such report, the 
Committee reports to the Board a resolution designating a particular 
site and authorizing the Comptroller to purchase same. 

The system described seems to us hardly calculated to secure the 
selection by the committee of the best site available. For the thorough- 
ness of the investigation made by a member of the Sites Committee 
must necessarily be largely determined by the amount of time which he 
happens to have at his disposal. Moreover, the selection of a particular 
site in a particular locality is a matter requiring such expert knowledge, 

1 The function formerly exercised by this committee of ascertaining the need for 
sites has virtually been abandoned by it since 1911, when the practice of adopting cor- 
porate stock budgets annually was inaugurated. 



l8o EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

both of school requirements and of real estate values, and such detailed 
study of the local conditions connected with each case that we cannot 
but deem it highly inappropriate that such selection should be made 
solely by unpaid officers giving only their spare time to the work. 

That in practice selections made by the Committee on the basis of 
the recommendations of the individual members are not infrequently 
injudicious is unquestionably evidenced by the relatively large number 
of instances in which the Committee has recommended the rescission of 
the selection made by it, and the substitution of another selection upon 
the basis of a recommendation made to it by the real estate appraiser 
of the Department of Finance. 

In reviewing the catalogue of functions exercised by the business 
committees, as above presented, we are able to find few functions, 
indeed, for the exercise of which, by a committee of unpaid commis- 
sioners, meeting at most weekly, and unfamiliar with the detail of the 
business in hand, any justification is to be found in reason or experience. 

It has already been pointed out, in connection with the work of the 
Committee on Buildings, that all but a negligible part of its work is 
either routine, requiring in no case a discretion which could not safely 
be vested in a reliable clerk, or is of a technical or detailed character, 
requiring information which the Committee, through lack of time and 
special training, does not possess; that committee intervention in this 
bureau is consequently, for the most part, unnecessary and wasteful. 

Without going into a similarly detailed analysis, we may state that 
the same general criticism seems to apply as well to the supervision 
exercised by the Committees on Supplies and on Care of Buildings over 
the several organizations under their control. Putting aside for later 
consideration, the actual mischief which the system of committee con- 
trol in these services may work, it is condemned at this point merely 
because it is work performed for the performance of which no good 
reason can be discerned. 

(b) Educational administration 

(Committees on Elementary Schools, High Schools and Training 
Schools, Vocational Schools, Nautical Schools, Lectures, Libraries and 
Athletics.) 

Few functions of a general administrative character are specifically 
vested in any of the educational committees by the by-laws. The func- 
tions assumed by the several committees under their general powers of 
supervision vary. The Committee on Elementary Schools appears to 
be consulted by the City Superintendent in matters in which neither the 
by-laws, nor, it would appear, any considerations of policy, demand 
such reference, as, for example, in the establishment of annexes or the 
reorganization of departments, or the particular location of certain spe- 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION i8l 

cial activities, such as classes for anaemic children, etc. The same is 
true of the Committee on High Schools and Training Schools, which, 
in addition, exercises control over minor matters of administration pe- 
culiar to the high schools, such as granting of luncheon concessions, the 
regulation, frequently in some detail, of the entertainments, plays, and 
other public presentations given by the pupils of high schools and train- 
ing schools, and the determination of the specific purposes to which the 
funds received from the State for the purchase of library books and 
apparatus in high schools, and the funds appropriated by the City for 
the same purpose shall be applied. 

The Committee on Special Schools also meets certain special prob- 
lems of administration. It approves the organization and location of 
the special schools decided upon by the District Superintendent in 
charge of them, including the termination of the services of teachers, 
when the classes become too small to make their continuance profitable. 
It may be noted in passing that the activities grouped under the term 
"Special Schools" are of a very heterogeneous character, embracing 
evening schools, evening high schools,^ vacation schools, vacation play- 
grounds, baths, roof gardens, truant schools and parental schools, and 
involving also, with reference to the latter, supervision over the entire 
compulsory attendance service, a supervision which has considerably 
increased in importance since the passage, in March, 19 13, of a law 
amending the Charter by vesting the power of enforcement of the Com- 
pulsory Attendance Law in the Board, instead of in the City Superin- 
tendent, as formerly. 

The Committee on Vocational Schools and Industrial Training ap- 
pears to have few functions of an executive character, doubtless because 
of the relatively slight development which the activity over which it 
has supervision has thus far attained. With the extension of voca- 
tional training, however, the opportunities for the performance of 
administrative routine by this committee will greatly increase. Even 
more rapidly, however, will increase its opportunities for important 
legislative work. It will be of interest to observe whether this com- 
mittee will follow the older school committees in allowing its time and 
attention to be absorbed by routine trifles. 

The administrative duties of the Executive Committee on the Nau- 
tical School are limited to authorizing the superintendent to purchase 
supplies, returning the entrance deposit of students (this action requir- 
ing the unanimous vote of the committee), and appointing members of 
the crew upon recommendation of a committee of the ship officers. The 
Committee on Athletics appears to have little other justification for ex- 

1 The evening high schools, it would seem, should more properly be placed imder 
the supervision of the Committee on High Schools in order to secure better co- 
ordination between their work and that of the day high schools ; and the same is 
probably true with respect to the evening elementary schools, a large part of whose 
work is supplementary to that of the day elementary schools. 



l82 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

istence than the granting of permission to school athletic organizations 
to hold athletic events outside of the school premises, and conversely 
to outside organizations to use school athletic facilities. The adminis- 
trative functions which are supposed to take up the attention of 
the seven members of the Committee on Lectures and Libraries are 
the annual distribution of elementary school library money (a purely 
clerical function), the approval of the purchase of reference books for 
use in the library bureau, the authorization of the payment to lecturers 
of fees in excess of those regularly paid, the payment of traveling ex- 
penses of lecturers coming from a distance, and the approval (subject 
to the later approval of the Committee on Supplies) of bills for expenses 
in connection with the conduct of the public lectures. 

Even a cursory examination of the summary of the administrative 
functions of the educational committees demonstrates, we think, beyond 
the need of much discussion, first, that, as with the business committees, 
these committees transact a tremendous amount of petty detail, most of 
it recjuiring no discretion, and for the rest of such a character that the 
members of the committees are not possessed of the information pre- 
requisite to an intelHgent exercise of discretion. Still more striking, 
however, is the apparent fact that some of the committees, notably 
those on athletics, lectures and libraries, and the nautical school have 
very little, if any, justification for existence. The paucity and pettiness 
of the functions exercised by them ( for they rarely act beyond the ad- 
ministrative functions above detailed) warrant the conclusion that they 
were not created because of any manifest need for their existence, but 
for some other purpose, presumably to make available several additional 
committee chairmanships and memberships for members of the Board. 

The study of the powers and functions of the several committees of 
the Board, above presented, warrants, we believe, the statement that the 
disposition of far the greater part of the administrative business coming 
before almost all of the committees requires either so little discretion 
that it could be entrusted to a reliable and intelligent clerk, or so much 
technical information and such detailed accjuaintance with the situation 
involved that the committees are compelled to act solely upon the recom- 
mendation of the paid experts who devote their entire time to the ac- 
quisition of such information. To the extent to which the committees 
devote their time to either of these classes of matters they serve no 
useful functions whatever, but, on the contrary, may, in certain cases, 
tend to shift to the shoulders of a committee a responsibility which 
should properly be borne by a bureau chief. 

The recommendation seems, therefore, plainly called for that im- 
mediate steps be taken to effect the relinquishment by the committees of 
the Board of all powers the exercise of which does not appear plainly 
calculated to further the efficient conduct of the department's business, 
and with reference to which there is no good reason evident why the 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 183 

judgment of the educational or administrative chief involved should be 
submitted to a committee of laymen for review. 

In the succeeding- section this recommendation is found to receive 
strong support from a study of the actual operation of the committee 
system. 

Section 3. The Efficiency of the Committee System 

a. Delegation of power to single member. 

b. Power of negative action. 

c. Delay. 

d. Cuml)ersomeness. 

e. Coordination of action of the several committees. 

The actual operations of the system of committee intervention, re- 
vealed in the minutes and files of the several committees of which 
examination has been made, gives evidence that, far from being merely 
useless, such intervention seriously impedes the efficient, economic and 
responsible transaction of the Department's business. 

a. Delegation of power to single member 

In the first place, it may be noted that, while the committees in full 
meeting concern themselves with innumerable tritiing details of busi- 
ness, nevertheless, either as a matter of practice or because they find it 
more convenient on a particular occasion, they sometimes empower a 
few. or even only one of their members to take final action on matters 
of not inconsiderable importance. Such instances have come to our 
attention in connection with several of the committees. Thus, we find 
that, at the meeting of the Committee on High Schools, on March 18, 
1 912, the chairman of the Committee reported to the Committee that he 
had denied the requests made by the principal of a high school that a 
few of the pupils of his school be permitted to assist the School Art 
League in the jjresentation of a tableau, and by the director of drawing 
in high schools that pupils from some of the physical training classes 
of the city high schools l3e permitted to take part in the tableau. So far 
as we have been able to learn, this action of the chairman was purely 
a discretionary one, not having been based upon any resolution or 
authorization of the committee. x\t a meeting of the same committee. 
a few weeks later, the chairman reported that he had revoked the lunch 
counter concession, held at one of the high schools, and had granted 
permission to the general organization of the school to maintain a lunch 
counter. 

The delegation of power by a committee to its chaimian is espe- 
cially common at the beginning of the summer, when, in some cases, 
as, for example, the case of the Committee on Supplies in the year 1912, 



184 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

the committee vests the chairman with full power over all business 
requiring the attention of the committee. That committee, at the meet- 
ing mentioned, referred to the chairman with power the entire matter 
of the departmental estimate in relation to the salaries of employees for 
the year 1913. In this connection it should be noted that the virtual 
adjournment of committees for the summer takes place at exactly the 
time when the activities of those committees is called for in the work 
of preparing the annual departmental estimate. 

The most striking instance which has come to our attention of the 
delegation of important committee business to a single individual arose 
in 1912, with reference to the establishment of continuation high schools 
for the summer of that year. The establishment of such high schools 
was originally recommended by the City Superintendent, in his annual 
report for 191 1, and the Committee on High Schools had approved 
that recommendation, but had never presented a report voicing its ap- 
proval to the Board of Education, though the insertion of provision for 
continuation high schools had been made in the estimate for 191 2, from 
which it had been stricken, however, by the Board of Estimate and 
Apportionment. It appears that, as the summer of 19 12 approached, 
the chairman of the Committee on Finance, who was at that time also 
acting chairman of the Committee on High Schools, conceived the idea 
of establishing continuation high schools, notwithstanding the absence 
of provision for them in the budget, by making use of an excess in the 
fund for high school teachers' salaries. 

The minutes of the Committee on High Schools accordingly state 
that the Committee on Einance reported that there was a moderate 
amount available for the establishment of continuation high schools. 
No communication from the Committee on Einance, however, is to be 
found in the records of the Committee on High Schools, and we have 
been informed that the communication referred to was made orally 
by the chairman of the Committee on Einance. Acting upon this com- 
munication the Committee decided to recommend to the Board the estab- 
lishment of two continuation high schools, but referred to the chairman 
and acting chairman (in effect, therefore, to the acting chairman), in 
conjunction with the City Superintendent, with power, the preparation 
of its report to the Board. It therefore appears that the report of the 
Committee, which was presented to the Board on June 12, 1912, was, 
to all intents and purposes, the report only of the acting chairman of 
the Committee, acting, moreover, upon the authority conferred upon him 
at a meeting at which only five of the nine members of the Committee 
were present. The point of this illustration is sharpened by the fact 
that the resolution recommending the establishment of the high schools, 
presented to the Board, included also^ specifications as to the subjects of 
instruction, the length of sessions, the conditions of admission, the com- 
pensation of teachers, and the size of classes, all of which were enacted 
"by the Board in a routine manner. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 185 

b. Power of negative action 

The by-laws of the Board require (Section 13) that every standing 
committee shall report to the Board of Education upon any matter re- 
garding which a report is required by the by-laws, resolution or the 
practice of the Board. Upon other matters the action of any stand- 
ing committee shall be final, unless disapproved or modified by the 
Board. The natural effect of these provisions has, of course, been to 
bring before the Board only affirmative actions of the committee, and 
it is thus perfectly possible for a committee to disapprove a very im- 
portant recommendation or suggestion submitted to it by another com- 
mittee or by an officer of the Board— a recommendation which perhaps 
the Board as a whole might highly favor. 

To a certain extent, the Board has attempted to meet this difficulty. 
Prior to 19 12, it not infrequently happened that a committee failed to 
report to the Board a resolution expressly referred to it by that body. 
By resolution of March 27, 1912/ however, the Secretary was in- 
structed to present to the Board, at the first meeting in each month, a 
statement of all matters referred by the Board to any of its committees, 
or to the Board of Superintendents, and not yet reported upon. This 
provision does not, however, it will be observed, compel any committee 
to report a matter referred to it ; and, indeed, on the statement of mat- 
ters pending before committees on June 11, 1913," we find motions re- 
ferred to a committee fully a year before. 

Furthermore, this provision has no reference to matters brought to 
the attention of a committee, not by the Board itself, as is often the case, 
but by a Local School Board, or an officer of the Board. Without citing 
particular instances, several of which are available, the statement may 
be made that in no small number of cases committees of the Board have 
taken final, adverse action on recommendations the importance of which, 
in respect to both content and origin, amply entitled them to considera- 
tion by the full Board. 

c. Delay 

The frequency of the meetings of the several committees is deter- 
mined by the committees themselves, and not by the by-laws of the 
Board. In practice the Committees on Buildings, Supplies, Care of 
Buildings, and By-Laws meet weekly, those on Finance and on Ele- 
mentary and Special Schools bi-weekly, and those on High and Voca- 
tional Schools monthly, and the remaining committees at the call of the 
chairman. Prior to any examination of the actual facts it must be 
plain that, in matters of administration, occasions must from time to 
time arise in which delay results from the necessity of waiting for 
committee action. A combination of circumstances, such as a matter 
coming up for consideration immediately after a committee meeting, 

* Minutes, p. 525. * Minutes, p. 891. 



l86 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

or the failure of the committee, for one reason or another, to hold a 
stated meeting, or a failure of a member having the matter in charge 
to appear at a meeting, necessitating the laying over of the matter to 
the next meeting, may delay action upon a matter for a month or six 
weeks, and, indeed, in the case of the committees which meet irregularly, 
several months. Several such instances have been noted in our exami- 
nation of committee minutes. 

On June 21, 1912, the Committee on Care of Buildings received 
from the Deputy Superintendent of School Buildings for The Bronx a 
communication relative to the inattention of the janitor of a school in 
that borough to his instructions regarding loose glass in certain parts of 
the building. At the meeting of the Committee, in the week following, 
the janitor and principal of the school appeared and were heard. The 
matter was then referred to the Bronx member of the Committee for re- 
port. The following week that member failed to report. Then ensued 
the summer vacation, during which the Committee did not meet. When 
it again convened, on September 6, the member for The Bronx had 
resigned, and the matter was consequently referred to the new Bronx 
member, when he should be appointed, for report. That gentleman., 
accordingly, the following week, exactly three months after the com- 
plaint had first been registered with the Committee, reported that he had 
investigated the matter and found everything in first-class condition. 
A system of administration under which such methods of investigating 
complaints of incompetency are possible can be recommended, in our 
view from only one standpoint — that of the incompetent complained of. 

In the Committee on Finance, in 19 12, no business was transacted 
during the months of June, July and August, because at none of the 
three meetings held during those months (June 11, August 14 and Au- 
gust 26) was there a quorum present, the absence doubtless being due 
to the members being away from the City on vacations. 

It should be noted, moreover, that the period mentioned is exactly 
that in which the activity of the committee is especially required, if re- 
quired anywhere, in the preparation of the annual departmental esti- 
mate. 

With reference to the wholly useless formality imposed upon school 
principals of obtaining the consent of a committee to the use of the 
school building for other than purely school purposes, an instance of 
delay is also available. On December 4, 19 12, there was presented to the 
Committee on High Schools a request from the principal of Erasmus 
Hall High School, requesting permission to use the auditorium on that 
very day for a special entertainment, the proceeds to be used for the 
general organization. The communication had been written on No- 
vember 18, but no meeting of the Committee had been held until De- 
cember 4. The extension of permission having thus been delayed until 
it was too late to be availed of, the Committee was forced to approve 
the request for a subsequent date. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 187 

In November. 1910, shortly after the adoption of the city budget 
for 191 1, the Committee on Snpphes decided that, in view of the size 
of the appropriation for supphes contained in that budget, it would be 
necessary to dispense with certain of the more expensive supplies used 
in the teaching of sewing and embroidery. The report of a subcom- 
mittee of the Committee on Supplies, embodying recommendations 
toward this end, was, on December i, referred to the Committee on 
Studies and Text-Books, which, under the by-laws, must pass upon 
all changes in the supply list. That committee, however, took no action 
in the matter until February 16, 191 1, two weeks after the opening of 
the spring term, and too late, therefore, for any changes decided on to 
be put into operation in that term, inasmuch as the subsecpient action of 
the Board of Superintendents and of the Board of Education was also 
necessary. As a matter of fact, the only action taken by the Committee 
on Studies and Text-Books, after this delay of two and a half months, 
was to refer the recommendations before it to the Board of Superin- 
tendents. 

A subsidiary cause of delay is also to be found in an overlapping of 
jurisdiction of two or more committees, resulting in an obstruction of 
business until the jurisdictional Cjuestion is settled, or until a working 
agreement is reached between the coordinate powers. Thus, in the 
spring of 1912. action by the Board, looking toward the securing of funds 
for the payment of a mechanical engineer, who should endeavor to 
economize the use of coal by school janitors, was delayed for a number 
of weeks, pending the determination whether such mechanical engineer, 
when appointed, would be subject to the control of the Committee on 
Supplies (which su]:)ervises the purchase of coal), or to that of the Com- 
mittee on Care of Buildings (which has supervision over janitors). 

Additional analogous instances of delay, not to mention confusion 
and irritation, arising from such overlapping of authority, might be 
cited, but the faulty scheme of committee organization, out of which 
they arise, is merely the reflection of the scheme of administrative or- 
ganization in the department ; and it is. therefore, that organization, 
rather than the system of committee intervention, to which criticism 
should be directed. 

d. Cumbersomeness 

Entirely apart, however, from the question whether the present com- 
mittee svstem of the Board tends to delay business to its detriment, 
that system stands condemned, we believe, on purely general considera- 
tions, bv its excessive cumbersomeness and unwieldiness. A few tl^i- 
dom illustrations, gathered from a more or less cursory reading of the 
minutes of some of the committees, will enforce this contention : 

(i) 1912 — The Superintendent of School Supplies, having re- 
ceived an estimate for furnishing high school text-books, which were 
somewhat worn, referred to the Committee on Supplies the question 



1 88 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

whether such worn books would be acceptable. The Committee on 
Supplies referred the inquiry to the Committee on High Schools, which, 
on deciding the estimate to be satisfactory, so reported to the Committee 
on Supplies, which so instructed the Superintendent of School Supplies. 

(2) The Supervisor of Janitors, having been informed that the 
copper leader on a certain school building was continually being tam- 
pered with, in the attempt to steal the copper, so reported to the Com- 
mittee on Care of Buildings, on July 5, 19 12. The committee ordered 
the Supervisor to investigate and report to it regarding the most practi- 
cal method of protecting the leader. No meeting of the committee was 
held until two months later, September 6, but on that date the Super- 
visor reported in favor of replacing the copper leader with one of gal- 
vanized iron. The Committee on Care of Buildings, however, having 
no power to order repairs, merely submitted the Supervisor's report to 
the Committee on Buildings. That Committee, in turn, referred it to 
the Superintendent of School Buildings, who, at the next meeting of 
the Committee, reported unfavorably upon the suggestion of the Super- 
visor of Janitors. The Committee approved his report, and so informed 
the Committee on Care of Buildings. It needs no pointing out that 
what was involved here was merely a difference of opinion upon a 
purely technical point, between the Supervisor of Janitors and the Su- 
perintendent of School Buildings. Unless these two .officials should 
ignore the existence of the committees, and come to an understanding 
privately, it would seem that agreement between them could be reached 
only by a process of elimination of the successive suggestions of the 
Supervisor of Janitors — a process carried on between the two commit- 
tees involved by means of formal communications. 

(3) The Supervisor of Janitors, having decided that janitors ought 
to be provided with certain supplies (soap, cheesecloth and cham- 
ois), so reports to the Committee on Care of Buildings. The commit- 
tee accordingly enacts a resolution recjuesting the Committee on Supplies 
to add the items mentioned to the supply list. The Committee on Sup- 
plies approves the recjuest and instructs the Superintendent of Supplies 
accordingly. 

(4) In the spring of 1912 some of the ecjuipment used in teaching 
a class in an evening school was removed without authorization. Before 
this apparently simple matter was finally adjusted, a not inconsiderable 
correspondence ensued, participated in by the Committees on Buildings, 
Care of Buildings and High Schools, and the Associate Superintendents 
assigned to two of those committees. 

(5) In 191 1 the Board of Superintendents sent to a printer copy 
for a high school syllabus in certain subjects. After the proof had 
been received from the printer, however, the Board apparently changed 
its plans, and delayed in returning the proof to the printer. The printer 
finally sent a letter of inquiry regarding the matter, but, according to 
the practice obtaining, under which the Committee on Supplies has su- 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 189 

pervision of all printing, this letter was referred to that Committee. 
That Committee accordingly ordered a communication to be sent to the 
Board of Superintendents asking for the information desired. The 
Board failed to answer this communication, and the Committee conse- 
quently, several months later, addressed another communication to it. 
Eventually the Committee obtained the desired statement from the 
Board of Superintendents, and duly transmitted it to the printer, not, 
however, before receiving a letter from him in which the inability of 
the average business man to appreciate the niceties of the Board's com- 
mittee system is well demonstrated. 

e. Co-ordination of action of the several committees 

The by-laws of the Board have provided no special means by which 
the actions of the several diverse committees may be coordinated and 
related to each other — no clearing house wherein adjustments and corre- 
lations may be made. Each committee is assigned to watch over some 
particular part of the vast plant, but no office, body, or committee is 
provided to see to it that all parts of the organization are working in 
harmony and toward the same end — that they are working with as 
little duplication and friction as possible. 

Theoretically, the Board itself should fulfill this directing function. 
All committee actions of importance must come before it for approval, 
and it may issue directions of any sort to any of its committees, or to 
the officers under their supervision. As has already been demonstrated, 
however, the size of the Board, and the methods of transacting business 
at present employed by it, make the exercise by it of any such super- 
visory or coordinating function impossible. The Executive Committee, 
too, it has been seen, though it was unquestionably intended by the 
Charter to fulfill exactly the function described, is a negligible, indeed, 
almost an imaginary, quantity. 

The by-laws provide that the President of the Board shall, cx-ofUcio, 
be a member of all committees, but, it is needless to state, he attends 
but few of their meetings, never, in any case, enough to make possible 
the exercise by him of any real influence in the direction of coordinating 
and unifying their action. 

It thus appears that there exists in the Department of Education a 
form of organization not to be found in any other of the City's depart- 
ments, a sharp division of the department into a number of separate 
bureaus, with no central official or body to adjust dififerences. secure 
cooperation and exercise general control. It is difficult to conceive of 
so enormous an organization as that of the Department of Education, 
in which, from time to time, differences of opinion would not arise be- 
tween two or more bureau heads upon a matter which concerns them 
in common, the most Expeditious and satisfactory method of settling 
which is by reference to the chief executive of the entire organization. 



190 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

In tHe absence of any such chief executive in the Department of Educa- 
tion, however, the necessary adjustments and correlations can be made 
only by the voluntary cooperative action of the several bureau chiefs, 
a form of action at best unreliable and unsatisfactory from the stand- 
point of administration. 

It has been seen, moreover, that the chiefs of the business bureaus 
and, though to a less extent, the educational oflicers, can take no step of 
importance without the sanction of their several committees; so that it 
is on the part of these bodies that cooperative action becomes necessary. 

The committee system, however, militates still further against such 
cooperative action. In the first place, the necessity under which the 
committees labor of transacting business with each other by means of 
formal communications, and of waiting upon each other's meetings, 
constitutes a serious obstacle to joint action, an obstacle which is only 
partly removed by the opportunity afforded at the bi-weekly meetings 
of the Board for the chairmen of the several committees to talk things 
over in private. 

In the second place, the committee system favors the development 
of a spirit of committee pride, which is opposed to the speedy and ready 
adjustment of differences of opinion. Under present conditions com- 
mittee work is the most important of the functions fulfilled by the mem- 
bers of the Board; and, it is not, therefore, surprising, if a member of 
even an important committee, who has no means, except through the 
perfunctory actions taken at meetings of the Board, of coming into 
contact with more than a very limited portion of the business of the 
Department, fails to see the work of his committee in its proper per- 
spective, and in its proper relations with the work of the other commit- 
tees. The very fact, moreover, that the amount of business brought 
before the Board is so great as to make the action of the Board upon it 
a mere formality, tends greatly to exaggerate the importance and value 
of committee action, and to strengthen the feeling of independence, 
amounting almost to pride, which each committee feels in the exercise 
of control over its particular province. 

A few examples of the feeling referred to have come to notice. The 
resentment displayed at a recent meeting of the Board by a member 
of the Committee on Sites, because a member of the Board ventured to 
Ciuestion the wisdom of a site purchase recommended by his committee, 
has already been noted. ^ At the same meeting the Committee on Sup- 
plies presented a resolution increasing the salaries of two of the clerical 
employees in the office of the Supervisor of Lectures. Thereupon, the 
Chairman of the Committee on Lectures and Libraries arose and indig- 
nantly demanded that this resolution be referred to his committee before 
being acted upon by the Board. His recjuest was acceded to, and at 
the next meeting of the Board his committee accordingly presented a 
resolution approving the recommendation of the ICommittee on Supplies. 

' See p ^m, supra. 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 



191 



Though utterly trivial, this incident was really highly illuminating; in 
point of fact, the Committee on Lectures had no more means at its 
command for ascertaining the merit of the two employees involved than 
had the Committee on Supplies, both committees being completely de- 
pendent for their information upon the Supervisor of Lectures; yet its 
chairman strongly resented the failure of the Committee on Supplies to 
give his committee the opportunity of placing its rubber stamp of ap- 
proval upon the action taken. 

The jealousy with which each committee guards its particular juris- 
diction has also received several other illustrations at recent meetings of 
the Board. At the meeting held February 26, 1913, ihere occurred on 
the floor of the Board a rather contentious discussion between the Chair- 
man of the Committee on Care of Buildings and the Chairman of the 
Committee on By-Laws, relative to the action of the latter committee 
in giving audience to a committee of janitor-engineers, relative to certain 
matters of interest to that class of employees. The action of the by- 
laws committee was resented by the care of buildings committee, not 
apparently because in itself wrong, but because it was felt to trench on 
the prerogatives of the latter committee. In point, in the same connec- 
tion, is also the protracted dispute which took place at the Board meet- 
ing on January 8, 1913, between the Chairmen of the Committees 
on Finance and Elementary Schools, concerning the apparently per- 
fectly simple and readily answerable c|uestion whether the lists of nomi- 
nations to positions in the elementary schools, as submitted by the com- 
mittee on those schools to the Board, did or did not indicate the name 
of the teacher, if any, whose place the nominee was desired to fill. The 
tenor of the discussion, as well as the heat with which it was conducted, 
conve5''ed the distinct impression that the two chairmen were consider- 
ably more interested in defending the wisdom or practices of their sev- 
eral committees, than in getting at the correct answer to the question in- 
volved — a question so simple that had the Auditor gone with it directly 
to the City Superintendent, instead of being obliged to present it to the 
Committee on Finance, he doubtless would have been able fully to settle 
it with that officer in a fraction of the time consumed by the chairmen 
of the two committees in discussing on the floor of the Board whether 
or not the matter required settlement. 

More serious consequences of the spirit of committee independence, 
not to say pride, related in the foregoing incidents, arise, however, in 
those cases in which, in the interests of good administration, it becomes 
necessary for one officer of the Board to exercise control of any matters 
which lie chiefly in the hands of another officer, under another commit- 
tee. We have in mind particularly the position of the Auditor of the 
Board, an officer who. we believe, in a proper conception and under a 
normal development of his office, should exercise an auditing control 
over all other divisions of the department. Our study of the position 
at present occupied by that officer, and the reasons therefor, as presented 



192 



EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 



at length elsewhere in this report/ has impressed us with the belief 
that the failure of the Auditor to assume his normal position in the 
Department's organization has been, to say the least, very largely due 
to the spirit of particularism in the several administrative branches of 
the Department to which the existence of the independent and coordinate 
committees has given rise, and which the presence in the Department 
of a single head, exercising control over all the administrative branches, 
would do much to weaken, if not to remove. 

The present committee system of the Board, it would seem, has 
tended to disintegrate the organization of the Department by placing 
over each division of that organization a committee of pov/ers coordi- 
nate with those of every other committee, and not responsible in prac- 
tice to any superior; and by hedging about joint or cooperative action 
between two or more divisions with so large an amount of almost diplo- 
matic formality as to militate against the development of a spirit of 
prompt and continuous cooperation. 

The intervention of the Board's committees in routine administra- 
tion is open to serious criticism, not only, as above contended, on gen- 
eral considerations, but because in practice it 

(i) sometimes results in the perfunctory approval by the Board 
of a report which ostensibly has had the consideration of a committee, 
but which, in fact, is the work of a single individual; 

(2) sometimes prevents the Board from giving consideration to 
a matter which should properly come before it; 

(3) causes a useless duplication, or rather multiplication, of rec- 
ords and correspondence; 

(4) entails a waste of much of the valuable time of the chief 
executive officers; 

(5) injects an additional and often prolonged delay into the al- 
ready slow-moving procedure of a city department; and 

(6) makes extremely difficult cooperation between the depart- 
ment's several bureaus. 

Summary 

1. The principle upon which the committee system of the Board 
of Education is grounded is that there should be a committee in charge 
of each particular division of the educational and business administra- 
tion of the Department, regardless of whether or not the nature of the 
work entrusted to that division is such that the judgment of laymen is 
of any value in connection with it. 

2. The creation of a multitude of committees has so limited the 
field of legislative and inspectorial business open to each of them as to 
compel them to seek outlets for their activity in the performance of 
administrative routine. 

' See Part III, Ch. 2, Sec. S- 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 193 

3. Hardly any of the routine administrative duties performed by 
the committees is such as properly to require the intervention of com- 
mittees of the Board in the slightest degree. 

4. The action of the committees in these classes of matters is not 
only in most cases wholly unnecessary, but actually interferes with the 
efficient conduct of business in several ways. 

In accordance with the foregoing findings our prime recommenda- 
tion is that above presented, namely, that immediate steps be taken to 
withdraw from the jurisdiction of the several committees all matters 
in which their action is not plainly called for by cogent considerations 
of policy, leaving power to handle all such matters in the hands of the 
several bureau chiefs, or the City Superintendent, subject, perhaps, in 
certain cases, such as the promotion of employees, to the approval of 
the President of the Board. 

This recommendation, it need hardly be pointed out, is practicable 
only in conjunction with the recommendation made in the preceding sec- 
tion of this report, that the Board itself divest itself of all functions of 
a routine administrative character. If the Board continues, as at pres- 
ent, to occupy its limited time with the performance of a mass of utterly 
trivial administrative acts, it will be unable to find sufficient time for the 
proper consideration of its legislative and inspectorial business, and will 
be forced to continue to approve, perfunctorily, the action of its com- 
mittees on these matters. 

If, however, both recommendations should be acted upon, the atten- 
tion of the committees of the Board, like that of the Board itself, would 
be almost wholly confined to business of legislative and inspectorial 
character. There can be no question, however, that neither the amount 
nor the character of this business is such as to warrant the existence of 
even half as many committees as exist at present. 

Moreover, the questions to be considered by the Board under the 
plan recommended are so obviously and indisputably the very subjects 
for the thorough consideration of which alone the Board is at all times 
superior to a single individual, that all matters connected with them 
should be considered in detail by all the members of the Board in full 
meeting. With reference to these functions, therefore, committee ac- 
tion, if called for at all, should be merely of a character calculated to 
facilitate and to elicit thorough-going consideration and discussion by 
the Board itself, and not to supplant or obviate such discussion, as is its 
effect at present. 

The change in committee functions recommended, therefore, carries 
with it, as a logical necessity, a great reduction in the number and im- 
portance of the standing committees of the Board. 

It can hardly be questioned, however, that the very large member- 
ship of the Board, numbering no less than forty-six, would constitute 
a very serious obstacle to the establishment of a committee system under 



194 



EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 



which committee places could be provided for only a fraction of the 
members; and that, if such a system should be established, it would be 
subject to unremitting pressure from those, desirous of providing com- 
mittee places for a larger number of members. The pernicious in- 
fluence which a numerous membership in a parliamentary body invari- 
ably tends to exercise in the direction of needless multiplication and 
enlargement of committees has long been strikingly illustrated in the 
national legislature, and there can be little question that the utterly un- 
called-for elaboration of the committee system of the Board of Educa- 
tion has been, in a large measure, if not indeed entirely, due to the large 
membership of that body. 

The Charter having provided for forty-six men where but a fraction 
of that number were sufficient to do the work, the Board has been con- 
fronted with the necessity of providing a large amount of additional 
work. The solution reached has been the establishment of numerous 
committees of large membership but small utility. The lesson of the 
past would seem, therefore, to be that, whatever the other advantages 
of the present size of the Board, it is, and probably must continue to be, 
a factor inimical to the attainment of simplicity and efficiency in the 
Board's committee system, and, consequently, in the whole business of 
the Department. 



SUMMARY OF FINDINGS; RECOMMENDATIONS 

Part II 

The Board of Education is at the present time acting upon a false 
conception of its proper powers and functions. Instead of confining 
itself to the larger problems of legislation and surveillance contemplated 
for it by the Charter and dictated to it by all considerations of efficiency, 
it has attempted to intervene, either as a whole, or through standing 
committees, in the overwhelming mass of minutiae involved in the ad- 
ministration of the Department. 

If the purpose of this attempt has been not merely to provide activity 
for the members of the Board, but to enable the Board to function more 
efficiently as a directing and unifying agency in the administration of 
the Department, it has failed of its purpose; while, as a result, the legis- 
lative and regulatory effectiveness of the Board has been very seriously 
impaired. 

Furthermore, the system of numerous special administrative commit- 
tees which has developed has served few, if indeed, any useful pur- 
poses, but has, on the other hand, introduced into the administration 
of the Department elements of delay, cumbersomeness, disintegration 
and diffusion of responsibility. 

It is therefore recommended : 

1. Functions of the Board 

That the Board take immediate steps to resume its proper position 

"in the educational government of the City, by divesting itself of all 

purely administrative functions, though saving to itself the power of 

reviewing the action of any of the officers or committees to whom it 

may delegate such functions. 

2. Committee System 

That the present committee organization be abolished, and that in 
its place there be organized only such committees as are found, by ex- 
perience, to be desirable for the purpose of preparing, for the real con- 
sideration of the Board, information upon matters of fundamental, leg- 
islative and inspectorial character, leaving to the paid officers and 
employees of the Board all purely administrative and technical matters; 
and that, during the continuance of the present provisions of the Char- 
ter, imposing upon the Board or its Executive Committee the perform- 
ance of administrative duties, the Executive Committee be reempowered 

195 



196 EDUCATIONAL INVESTIGATION 

to discharge those duties; with a view, however, to the eventual repeal 
of the charter provisions in question. 

The changes above recommended involve no amendment of the 
Charter. They lie wholly within the power of the Board. 

The change in the committee system thus recommended, however, 
a change of the highest and most urgent importance, is believed to be 
made almost impossible of accomplishment by the numerous member- 
ship of the Board. Is the exceptionally large size of the Board called 
for by the nature of its position or functions? 

At the present time there exists an apparent necessity for the large 
membership of the Board in the large amount of administrative busi- 
ness performed by its members on its many committees. If, however, 
that business should, as recommended, be entrusted to the paid ofificers 
of the Board, this necessity would disappear, and justification for the 
numerous membership of the Board could be found only in the nature 
of its legislative and inspectorial work. 

It is far from clear, however, that the wisdom of the Board's legis- 
lation is necessarily in direct proportion to the multitude of its counsel- 
lors. The contention that a Board as large as the present is necessary 
for the proper representation of the diverse bodies of public opinion 
existing in the City will be found on examination, it is believed, to be 
a veiled expression of approval of the practice which has for some years 
been consistently followed by the appointing power, of selecting for 
membership at least one representative of each of the more numerous 
national or racial and, to some extent, economic groups, existing in 
the population of the city. Such special representation is, however, we 
believe, unnecessary to insure to any such group a just consideration by 
the Board of its special needs or demands, especially as the local boards 
are peculiarly fit for this function. 

Aside, then, from the representation of special interests, there seems 
no reason for so numerous an educational legislature. It needs no point- 
ing out that, in a body of the size of the Board, there almost invariably 
emerges a small group of members who perform almost all of its labors 
and are responsible for almost all of its decisions. Observation of the 
present Board at work does not indicate that it is a marked exception to 
this rule. 

The considerations which, on the other hand, point to the desira- 
bility in general of a small board, whether in educational or in any other 
branch of government, and which, in the apparent absence of counter- 
vailing considerations in this case, seem to us conclusive, are too obvi- 
ous to require more than mere mention. The concentration of responsi- 
bility in a few men, a greater importance and dignity of membership, 
and its correspondingly great attractiveness for the highest type of citi- 
•.zen, a far greater speed, consistency and unity of action, are results 
which we are convinced would be realized by a smaller Board of Educa- 



ORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 



197 



tion. It is a work which can better be done by a few men than by 
many. 

To such a reduction in the size of the Board, however, even when 
admitted to be urgently called for by the existing situation, the objection 
is urged that it would leave the Boroughs of Queens and Richmond, two 
distinct geographic divisions of the City, having distinct interests yet 
populations of only one-twentieth and one-fiftieth respectively of the 
total population of the City, either without any representation, or with 
an unjustly large representation. 

Precisely the same dilemma, however, was faced by the framers 
of the present Charter in the organization of the Board of Estimate, 
which, too, it was desired should be small, yet representative of all the 
geographic divisions of the City. The problem was solved by the device 
of weighting the votes of the several borough representatives in an 
approximate proportion to the populations of their districts, while at 
the same time the possibility of interborough log-rolling was provided 
against by the creation of three representatives of the City at large, 
with votes so weighted as to outnumber the votes of the borough repre- 
sentatives. The success which has unquestionably attended the opera- 
tion of this system of representation strongly suggests that it be applied 
also to the Board of Education. 

We therefore recommend : 



3. Organization of Board 

That the Charter be amended by providing that the Board of Educa- 
tion shall consist of eight members, three of whom shall represent the 
City at large and shall have three votes each ; and the remaining five of 
whom shall be appointed, one from each of the five boroughs of the City, 
and of whom the representatives of Manhattan and Brooklyn shall have 
two votes each, and the representatives of The Bronx, Queens and 
Richmond one vote each. 

The appointment of these officers could be vested either in the Mayor, 
as at present, or in the Mayor and Borough Presidents jointly, the for- 
mer appointing the city and the latter the borough representatives ; and 
provision could readily be made, as at present, for the overlapping of 
the terms of the several members. 



VITAE. 

The author of this monograph was born in 
the City of New York in 1888. He was 
graduated from the College of the City of 
New York in February 1910. He spent the 
years 1910 (February) -1911 and 1912-1913 
in graduate study in public law and economics 
at Columbia University. In 1910 he was 
awarded a University Scholarship in Con- 
stitutional Law, and in 1911 the Toppan 
Prize in that subject. During the year 1911- 
1912 he was Fellow in Political Science at 
the University of Wisconsin. Since 1910 
he has been a member of the instructing 
staff of the College of the City of New York, 
until February 1913 as teaching fellow, and 
since that time as tutor. 



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